What's Love Got to Do with It?

Back in the 1970's Southern Baptists launched an evangelistic campaign that generated interest with a simple slogan: "Good News, America! God loves you!" At the time, many Americans found the idea surprising. Most Americans still believed they were guilty of something called sin. And the vast majority believed in a God of justice who ruled according to absolute truth. So it was a welcome relief for most Americans to learn that God actually loved them.

Not any more! After four decades of having our self esteem cultivated, massaged, enhanced and affirmed by schools, TV shows and popular books, most Americans expect God to love us all. Why shouldn't he? We're all unique and very special. And God is too cool to get uptight about something as personal as lifestyle choices!

These days just about everybody is convinced that God is loving. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have so warped and corrupted the meaning of "love," that a god who really loves us can no longer be holy!

• A loving god cannot have absolute, inflexible truths by which he judges the Earth. According to the New Age Gospel, he must allow us to choose our own way.
• A loving god cannot tell us that some behaviors are wrong, immoral, or sinful. Anything we really want to do must be natural, which means it's perfectly okay.
• A loving god cannot allow those he cares about to suffer. We no longer believe that parents can spank their children. We certainly don't believe a loving God could discipline us or allow us to suffer to refine our character.

In 1999, D.A. Carson wrote a book entitled, The Difficult Doctrine of a Loving God. He pointed out that in the name of "love," God has been stripped of any qualities we postmodern Americans find objectionable or even retro. Carson continued, "The love of God cannot long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God- to mention only a few non-negotiable elements of basic Christianity."

The man was a prophet. Tell Americans that God loves them, and they'll just shrug. "Duh!" They've known that for years, but they couldn't care less.

For more than a generation now, we've reminded our world that God is Love, and Grace is amazing! But they're not looking for love: they've settled for Twitter. And they're not interested in Grace unless she's a finalist on American Idol.

Today our fellow Americans are looking for meaning. Youth doesn't last. Money can't buy satisfaction. And sex is so yesterday. The malls and bars are populated with attractive twenty-somethings who have already owned expensive cars, lived in lavish homes, eaten at the finest restaurants, traveled abroad, gone to bed with multiple partners of both sexes, and are already pondering cosmetic surgery. And they wonder, "Is this really all there is?"

These jaded young people are our mission field, but they aren't looking for "faith, family and friends." I suspect there's not much that can be done until these desperate, pressurized, over-sexed rebels finally crash to the ground. When they fall back to Earth, some will welcome that old, old invitation: "Come to me all you who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." When you're flat on your face in the dirt, it's easier to look up and see the feet at the bottom of the cross.