This is a 42’ statue of Athena in Nashville, Tennessee. Seeing this giant statue was a stoic reminder that we all must be careful not to make idols in our lives. Athena was worshipped by the Greeks as a goddess of wisdom and military victory. In June, especially, our Western culture makes an idol out of love.
“Love Wins,” “love is love,” “love who you want,” are all well-known phrases tossed around on T-Shirts and Facebook posts. But do we really know what love is anymore? 1 John 4:16 tells us that, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.” This means that love is ultimately tethered to God and who He is and how He reveals Himself to us.
We can lust, having strong sexual desires, without God, but there is no way to separate God from what is true love. There are hundreds of verses in the Scriptures about love, how to treat our spouses in marriage, how God loves us, and how we are to love one another.
When we reduce love to a parade, a sense of pride, and a legal definition, we change with the opinion of pop culture, we treat love as an entity separate and disconnected from its source. We end up mindlessly chanting hollow phrases to a god who cannot hear us and will not bless us for our incantations.
All people are searching for love. It’s in our nature because we are made in the image of God. We are here to reflect His glory, and He does not hold love back from us. He loved us so much that He sent His only son to die for us (John 3:16). That is why we must treat love the right way, and God reveals to us what that right way is. It’s not always easy because we are in a fallen state, so we might not see it God’s way. Nonetheless, God created us and therefore knows what is best for us. He instructs us how to live so that we may succeed and find joy in Him.
We cannot separate love from God. We cannot know love outside of God. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God. We may not like it, and we may have a hard time following God’s guidelines for love at first, but if we open ourselves to God, in His free and prevenient Grace, He will help us be changed. All else leads to marketable slogans and idol worship of a false idea of love.