After listening to a sermon by Matt Chandler on Galatians 3, called "A Forgetfulness that Leads to Foolishness," I wanted to share a particularly edifying part. It's on love ... and Mexican food.
"The word love in our culture is almost a bankrupt word. I try to bring your attention to this: it means everything so it means nothing. You can love anything and really, when we use the word love, nine times out of ten, we’re saying “I like this a lot.”
So you can love weird things. So you loving tacos historically, if we look at the root of the word, is crazy. That you love fajitas, historically, wouldn’t even make sense. But yet, the word has been, in our culture, really emptied out of its meaning. There’s no weight that remains in that word. It is a fluffy, happy word that carries none of the strength and stamina that the actual word possesses.
Let me try to unpack it like this: When you love someone, there are certain things that you are drawn to do. You intend to encourage their strengths. Like when you see something in them that is of value or virtue you tend to praise it, tend to go, “You’re so good at that, it’s like a natural ability, it’s intrinsic, you work so hard, you’re so good at that.”
People love that kind of love. To be loved like that is of supreme value. We love that in our culture. If your love for me is all about me, I love that love. I’d do that love all day long. If love is: you encouraging my strengths and pointing out where I excel, I love the way you love me. I believe I just quoted a country song there, that’s growth for me.
Not only does it point out strengths and celebrate strengths, but love will also say, “Oh, you like this? Well if you like this, let me help you get this. You don’t like this? Let me do what I can to make you not have to experience that.” And again, our culture would say, “Yes and amen, that’s love. That’s what I want.” ...
The reality is though, although all of those things are easily a part of love, actual love is denser than that, it’s thicker than that. So yes, love encourages; yes, love edifies; yes, love protects; yes, love serves, but love will also move from edification, it will move from encouragement, and it will, because it loves, move to entreating or pleading with, and ultimately engaging and rebuking, when the ones we love are on a trajectory that end up in their destruction."
"The word love in our culture is almost a bankrupt word. I try to bring your attention to this: it means everything so it means nothing. You can love anything and really, when we use the word love, nine times out of ten, we’re saying “I like this a lot.”
So you can love weird things. So you loving tacos historically, if we look at the root of the word, is crazy. That you love fajitas, historically, wouldn’t even make sense. But yet, the word has been, in our culture, really emptied out of its meaning. There’s no weight that remains in that word. It is a fluffy, happy word that carries none of the strength and stamina that the actual word possesses.
Let me try to unpack it like this: When you love someone, there are certain things that you are drawn to do. You intend to encourage their strengths. Like when you see something in them that is of value or virtue you tend to praise it, tend to go, “You’re so good at that, it’s like a natural ability, it’s intrinsic, you work so hard, you’re so good at that.”
People love that kind of love. To be loved like that is of supreme value. We love that in our culture. If your love for me is all about me, I love that love. I’d do that love all day long. If love is: you encouraging my strengths and pointing out where I excel, I love the way you love me. I believe I just quoted a country song there, that’s growth for me.
Not only does it point out strengths and celebrate strengths, but love will also say, “Oh, you like this? Well if you like this, let me help you get this. You don’t like this? Let me do what I can to make you not have to experience that.” And again, our culture would say, “Yes and amen, that’s love. That’s what I want.” ...
The reality is though, although all of those things are easily a part of love, actual love is denser than that, it’s thicker than that. So yes, love encourages; yes, love edifies; yes, love protects; yes, love serves, but love will also move from edification, it will move from encouragement, and it will, because it loves, move to entreating or pleading with, and ultimately engaging and rebuking, when the ones we love are on a trajectory that end up in their destruction."