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April 24, 2006
Once upon a
time, if you wanted to know if he loved you, it was a simple matter of
asking a daisy flower. Pluck a petal, he loves me. Pluck
another, he loves me not. Plucking petal after petal, down to
the center of the daisy, love, not, love, not, love…He loves me!
Or, depending on the daisy, He loves me not!
Once upon a
time, it used to matter if he loved me or love me not. Love was the
point. We were looking for love, and we weren’t shy about it. Lucy
loved Desi. Mr. Cleaver loved Mrs. Cleaver. And the Beatles
celebrated She Loves You…Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…Yeah!
From the simple
to the complex, the measure of love was always the measure of value
rising from human activity. On the personal level, love was
sanctified in marriage. On the social level, love was the source of
power for great movements.
One can’t
imagine Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, leadership of the civil rights
movement without acknowledging its foundation of love. Writing from a
jail in Birmingham, he worked to explain his passion for opposing
segregation. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,
King wrote. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly.
King led
demonstrations against segregation. But he did so in love. He never
aimed to replace one system of injustice with another. Standing on
love, he exemplified his dream.
It is no mistake
that King founded his social movement on non-violence. Wife Coretta
Scott King explained that the central element of Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence emanated from “his belief in a divine
loving presence that binds all life. This belief was the force behind
all of my husband’s quests to eliminate social evil….”
Love, for King,
was the fountain from which flowed justice, dignity, and dreams. And
as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, King’s
writings always turned to the One who epitomized ultimate love.
Christ, in one
of his last moments as teacher to his disciples, expressed everything
we can say about love, humility and sacrifice with one towel and a
bowl of water. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now
showed them the full extent of his love….he got up from the meal, took
off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After
that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples'
feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” [John
13:1,4-5 NIV]
In the habit of
explaining great truths in parables, Jesus created a living parable of
sacrificial love, love that grows from humility, a love demonstration
of the Golden Rule. And just to make sure the disciples would clearly
receive his teaching, he told them, “Now that I, your Lord and
Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's
feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for
you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor
is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know
these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” [John 13:14-16 NIV]
He loves me…a
humble sacrifice done in love because you love me as you love
yourself. He loves me not…anything less.
A consideration
of the fullest expression of human love shines a bright light on the
culture of sex in America today. It helps explain why foes of
abstinence education fight with such furor and hostility against those
who would raise sexual abstinence until marriage as a noble and
expected standard of sexual behavior for young people.
This fight
against abstinence education is, at its most fundamental level, an
expression of an attempt to keep sex from being subordinated as a
function of sacrificial love. The fight against abstinence education
is a struggle to maintain sex as an isolated function of two physical
bodies, each seeking personal physical pleasure at the expense of what
might be done to the other body.
Abstinence
education restores the importance of love, humility and sacrifice as
part of the sexual act. It inspires students to value their sexuality
as one dimension of their capacity to be loved and to give love. This
is a much bigger focus for sex than what has been promoted since birth
control elevated Hugh Hefner as the cultural icon of human sex. And
it can’t be tolerated by those who pay homage to Hefner.
The sexual
revolution was less about birth control than it was about divorcing us
from the responsibility for the welfare of other human beings. We
were given permission to use others to gratify our physical sexual
urges and ignore the consequences of loveless sex as collateral
damage. Babies in utero were redefined as tissue. STDs were
redefined as treatable illnesses. And heartbreak was defined as a
religious value.
He loves me. My
total welfare, economic, physical, social, emotional, relational, and
spiritual is of greater importance to him than any physical shiver of
sexual pleasure.
Anything less
than that? He loves me not.
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New
International Version (NIV), Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by
International Bible Society.
Used by permission of Zondervan.
All rights reserved.
October 24, 2005
TEENS AND SEX: How Many? So What?
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