I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris Page A

statements reveal about our attitudes toward love? I think we make these somewhat overstated analogies because they remove personal responsibility. If a person falls into a pit, what can she do about it? If an animal contracts rabies and runs around foaming at the mouth and biting
    joshua harris people, it can't really help its nasty behavior because it has gone mad.
    Does it sound a little absurd to discuss love in such terms? I think so. Yet we tend to express our experience of love in these ways. We think of love as something beyond our control and thus excuse ourselves from having to behave responsibly. In extreme cases, people have blamed love for immorality, murder, rape, and many other sins. Okay, so maybe you and I haven't done those things. But perhaps you've lied to parents or friends because of a relationship. Maybe you pushed your partner too far physically. But if love is out of our control, we can't possibly be held responsible. Yes, we know we behaved rashly. Yes, we know we might have hurt others in the process, but we couldn't help it. We were in love.
    A slap in the face
    The world may define and defend love in these terms, but the Bible offers a very different perspective. For the person practicing the self-centered, feeling-governed, beyond-my-control love of the world, God's definition can be as startling as an unexpected slap in the face.
    The world takes us to a silver screen on which flickering images of passion and romance play, and as
    39 we watch, the world says, "This is love." God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, "This is love."
    God always defines love by pointing to His Son. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us to give a point of reference, a living, breathing, revolutionary example of true love. And Christ's antidote to the poison of self-love is the cross. "If anyone would come after me," Jesus said, "he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (matthew 16:24).
    looking up "love" in god's dictionary 65 Christ taught that love is not for the fulfillment of self but for the good of others and the glory of God. True love is selfless. It gives; it sacrifices; it dies to its own needs.
    "Greater love has no one than this," Jesus said, "that he lay down his life for his friends" (john 15:13). He backed up His words with His actions--He laid down His life first for all of us.
    Christ also showed that true love is not measured or governed by feeling. He went to the cross when every emotion and instinct in his body told him to turn back. Have you ever read the account of Jesus' praying in the Garden of Gethsemane? He clearly didn't feel like enduring the beatings, hanging on the cross, and giving up His life. But He laid His feelings before the Father, giving Himself over to the Father's will. Jesus' feelings were not the test of His love, nor were they His master.
    Christ wants us to have this same attitude. He did not say, "If you love me, you will feel warm, cascading sensations of religious emotion." Instead he told us, "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (john 14:15). True love always expresses itself in obedience to God and service to others. Good feelings are nice but not necessary.
    Jesus' example also shows us that love is under our control. He chose to love us. He chose to lay down his life for us. The danger of believing that you "fall in love" is that it also means you can "fall out of love" just as unexpectedly. Aren't you glad that God's love for us isn't as unpredictable? Aren't you thankful that God's love is under His control and not based on whim? We need to throw out the misconception that love is some strange "force" that tosses us around like leaves in the wind against our will. We cannot justify doing what we know is wrong by saying that "love" grabbed hold of us
    40 and "made" us behave irresponsibly That's not love. Instead, it's what the Bible calls in 1 Thessalonians 4:5 "passionate lust." We express