Love 2.0

This came up somewhat tangentially at a church men's meeting last Wednesday, discussing I Corinthians 16:13-14, and it deserves to be expounded in greater detail.

Undisputably, the New Testament brought a message of love that had never been seen before. The NASB translation turns up 192 instances of the word "love" in the New Testament. This was a new message for Jews and Greeks alike, and it really revolutionized the value systems in predominantly Christian areas. The foundation of modern secular humanism (the dominant ideology in the West today) is the Christian idea of individual worth, which was originally derived from the fact that God loved humans, thus imbuing us with value. Unfortunately, secular humanism has brought out Love 2.0, and it ain't the original!

Love 2.0, better known as "tolerance", is based on the idea of individual worth. If each person has value, then each person's beliefs, ideas, and physical attributes have value imbued by that person's valued personhood. Tolerance says we can't devalue anyone's idea because they are a person.

However, tolerance falls apart, because the foundation - God's love - has been removed. The result is that tolerance becomes a don't-ask, don't-tell policy. "I'll pretend I think your ideas have value if you pretend the same about me." Or "I tolerate you because you are a person, but don't tell me anything inside that might prove that you don't have the value I'm assuming you do." If we tolerate people, how do we deal with sin? Sure, most of the time we can deal with it the way this sinful world loves to deal with sin: by shrugging it off, minimizing it. But what about egregious sins - genocide, or child molestation, or Enron fraud? Where do we draw the line between people we "tolerate" and people we don't? At some point, our pretense breaks down, and someone's superficial human attributes aren't enough to gain our respect and tolerance.

This stands in sharp contrast with God's system, which has many of the same implications, but has God's love, and therefore God, as its foundation. Christ was the incarnation of God's love (and this was the original point made at the men's meeting), and He loved people even though He knew everything that would disqualify them from receiving our tolerance. Where tolerance has to remain superficial, agape love becomes more poignant the deeper it goes. As Christians, we should reject "Love 2.0". It may come with a message of tolerance - "you're alright" - but in the end it fails to give us a good reason to love or even tolerate those we really disagree with and dislike. Love 1.0, God's original, is based in the Truth:
A - You are a sinner, one who has rebelled against God. Same for all other humans.
B - God loves you and all others infinitely, despite His full knowledge of (A).
C - We are called to be imitators of God.
D - Ergo, we should love others infinitely, though we know both in a general and sometimes in a specific sense that they are sinners.

Tolerance means that blacks and whites can drink out of the same water cooler. And that's a good thing. Love means that blacks and whites can forgive one another's past sins, bear one anothers' burdens, and share the good news of Jesus Christ with one another. And that's a better thing.


On a not-really-related note, check out Mark Riddle, notably his post on "passion".