Love Ethics

Week 2 – Love Ethics (teaching format for cell group)

Biblical love in a Post Modern World

Look up Matthew 24:12

because lawlessness increased most people’s love will grow cold.

Not more than a 100 years ago people were tribal, meaning that people were born, lived, and died in the same community. You knew everyone around you. People used to look like squares, but today people are various shapes, circles, triangles, rectangles. They have moved away from the center. We live in a culture that is multi-cultural, multi-religions, varied ethnicities. The tribe used to be held together; they understood relationships. They made it work. It provided safety and security and you were significant in your culture, because you had a role to play.

Lawlessness has destroyed relationships. See Timothy and read this list to see the 21st century culture.

2Timothy 3ff

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. (People) Men will be:

lovers of self

lovers of money

boastful

arrogant

revilers

disobedient to parents

ungrateful

unholy

unloving

irreconcilable

malicious gossips

without self-control

brutal

haters of good

treacherous

reckless

conceited

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power

In summation - this list is a reflection of our culture:

1. World is full of anti-Christian rage/views.

Why would the world hate Christ? He tried to love people in the opposite way of that list. That is why the world hated him. All Christ did was try to love people. (It may be effective to go through that list and say the opposite. For instance, he threatens our self-centeredness.)

Look up 1 John 3:12: (Cain was jealous, because Able was righteous)

We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous.

Cain killed Abel, because Abel was good.

Christians in this culture will and are reviled because they are good; you, as a believer, must not shrink back; we must become more bold.

You will be hated especially when you discipline others like Christ did. You will be hated – if you are going to be hated, chose to win. Be hated for the right reason: because you know how to love.

Dare to discipline them. The bible is all about bold love. Bold love is the only option that we have available to us.

People in the world have answers? NOT! They have questions – but no answers.

Even if they are hateful and belligerent - they are lost and hurt.

2. There is lostness and confusion in the world, in our communities.

They are messed up and have no idea how things work.

3. People are coming to us from unresolved homes.

That defeat will be carried on into their ministry. People will pull back (use examples from your own life.)

Healing – you must bring healing into the discipleship relationship. Healing is what discipleship is all about.

If you do discipleship you must know how to go back to the tribe and resolve the relationship. People must go back and resolve their broken relationships. They must go back and change how they relate to their family.

4. Moral ignorance

Expounded upon below.

Church’s wrong view of love: Confused Christians

Look up: 1 Corinthians 13:13

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Christianity 101 is faith and hope

Christians have saving faith, but not effective faith. Faith without the labor of love is dead.

Look up James 2:17. The type of faith described in James is foolishness.

• Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

The church has a vague presence in community – faith and hope do not have the answers – there is no healing.

The church has a vague impact on our culture – again there is no genuine healing in people’s lives. Since there is no healing, the vacuum is filed with the world system. Therefore there is no significance.

People in the community have marginalized the relevance of Christ and his church.

The church is absorbed in clear materialism and this is apparent in the church. People do not “see” a difference and we must be different.

• We are so very caught up with our agenda that we do not make the time to sacrifice for others - people do not see a difference — We live our lives barely acknowledging others and say, “Thank you Lord, See you next Sunday or whatever day we “do” church.”

Divorce rate in the church is as high as non-believers.

• It is now at the 50% level - same rate as that of Non-Christians
• The Bible calls us to be ambassadors and ministers of reconciliation. However, we are not only ineffective in our calling to the lost world, we are also ineffective at healing ourselves.

Children are lost to the world.

• 80% of kids hate the church. (See Josh McDowell’s study, The Last Christian Generation). The children raised in the Church’ are bored and apathetic of their parents faith.

Christians are confused, wandering, and as self-absorbed as the people we are here to serve.

• We (at Xenos) could become just as confused. We preach grace and love.

• But, what does love mean? No one knows how to love effectively because we are sick, and we can not powerfully love. There is no content and we do not practice what we teach; we do not teach how to practice mature, sacrificial love; hence, counseling has increased and is still increasing, and little results.

As a result, we look into the future and see a world full of ever increasing emotional illnesses.

The inability to relate has devastating consequences. At the core of God’s plan is relationships. We cannot survive without relationships. All physical diseases are a result of emotional distress/malfunction. People must learn to give through servanthood. People must step outside of their comfort zones.

Depression increases with each passing generation – See comments concerning Daniel Kahneman’s, of Princeton University, Unhappy Mothers’ Survey (”The New Science of Happiness,”Time Magazine, January 17, 2005)

Motherhood used to be a valuable role - so women who were mothers felt significant. Now it is, at most, undervalued. Stay-at-home mothers struggle with depression now more than ever.

• In my own family the women have been depressed for over three generations – I do not believe it is purely genetic – It is the result of unresolved relationships and ineffective love!

It is becoming more difficult both to get people saved from the world and to raise up mature leadership. Why?

People are increasingly more damaged and isolated. One of the major causes is the lack of strong, intact families.

The path to leadership requires more investment because people are more deeply scarred than in previous generations.

We need a Christian love vocabulary because the world has changed the meaning of “love” and the Church has adopted this new understanding.

We need to go back to the Bible to understand God’s view of love.

Love therapy has its own language.

Why Love Therapy?

Irreconcilable differences with the secular psychology. Like - “learn to love yourself.”

• Truth exists – Political Correctness is bad. Whatever you want to believe is fine.
  • The Bible is the source of this truth.
• All disease and emotional upset begin with alienation from God .
• The sickness is real but the reason is spiritual. Sin exists!
• Man is totally depraved. This is the problem.
• Repentance is essential: you do not deserve anything.
• The problem is inside, not outside – other people and circumstances are not responsible for your problems.

Basic assumptions: Love Therapy

All love and much behavior is inherently irrational.

The human relationship is not rational. We think that if you just reason with people, they will love us. Alas, people love without reason.

People make irrational decisions about love.

• My husband loves me for irrational reasons.
• You can not reason someone out of feeling bad.
  • Arguments are an absurd and unhelpful effort to reason with the irrational.
• The energy driving that emotion is irrational.
  • It is an emotional power game. The one with the most emotional power wins - they win, but not because it was a rational argument.
• “You must have my view!” is one side of the argument whereas “Why do I have to have your view?” is the other.
  • There is a way to interact with principles and authority. Do not play the argument game.
  • Tell them what is right and true (Biblical Principles)
  • Love is not lawlessness. It is lawful.
  • People want to tangle you up with argument; however, do not engage the enemy. Do not attempt to use reason. It is not profitable.

Example of Irrational love:

It is a fact that good parents lie.

• Parents lie to make their kids feel safe and loved. They protect them and invest in them.
• They lie so that kids believe everyone will want to protect and invest in them.
• The reality is, this is not a safe and loving world. The world is not safe and does not love your children.
• Parents must teach that the world is evil and not fair. Parents must prepare their kids for that world.

The Bible says that we don’t deserve love. Yet anyone who is alive has received love.

Emotional motivation is what causes people to change.

• Part of emotional motivation for children includes physical reasoning. Also known as the proverbial spanking. “In order for me to love you I am going to momentarily withdraw my love from you.”

The key to emotional health is victorious love output.

Your parents loved you. It felt good to you as a kid.

Does it feel good now when your mom and dad say, “Wear your jammies. Brush your teeth. Don’t stay out late. Work with a balanced budget,” etc. This is repulsive even to a young teenager.

• What worked with toddlers and young children does not work with either adolescents or adults.

WHY IS THIS?

You can take care of yourself now.

We need to extend this into our other relationships.

Depression is a result of an inability to develop loving adult relationships.

Some of us are stuck in our childish “understanding of love.” How do we grow up?

Christ sees the problems as they truly are:

Viewpoint matters!

• Christ: “See things the way I do.”

• Us: “I can’t. I’m wallowing in the mud.”

What matters is the view point.

• How people react to you when you love them Christ’s way is irrelevant. When you love as Christ, it does not matter what others do to you. You can still love them. For example, “How dare you talk to me that way!”
  • This should not determine our actions.
  • Jesus never reacted to the treatment He received. He always acted in accordance to what was loving in a particular situation.
• We should not be intimidated by someone’s immaturity.
• God is never intimidated by our fits and rage.

Illustration of Mommy and the little boy:

Little boy: “I want ice cream!.” Mommy, “NO!”

Little boy: “But if you loved me, you’d give me the ice cream.”

The mother’s immature response would be to give in to the little boy’s love demand.

Introduction of love vocabulary:

Good example of victorious love output:

Example:

Unstable patient to doctor:“I am going to kill myself.”

Doctor to patient, “You can do this, but I am not going to feel guilty about that.”

• People are using suicide as a means to manipulate. If you remove their weapon, they soon stop trying to manipulate in this manner.
• People will want to use your own love demands against you.
• You must remain unaffected by this. You must be able to go in and love that person, expecting certain changes and behaviors from them.

Back to Mommy & little boy:

STREET: Present love feelings. This is where the immediate emotional stimulation comes in.

YARD: Permanent Love Values. This is where the love lessons learned at home are starting to be practiced.

HOME/INDOORS: Victorious Love Output. Where parents instill their permanent love values in their children.

Home/Indoors:

Victorious love output in experienced in the home.

In the home, parents actually feel loved because they are the ones doing the loving.

The children, however, do not experience those love feelings. This is because they are so well-loved by their parents that they wrongly believe that there is something intrinsically lovable about them. The kids are on the receiving end of love.

Thus, parents lie by teaching their children that they “deserve” to be loved. But they don’t.

Yard:

Full of fun, activity, and adventure.

Yard is further away from the mommy, but when the yard has a fence, mommy can still keep a distant eye, while providing the child a little more freedom to move around on his own.

In that environment, the child begins to learn what makes love work.

Remember: Parents teach their children both good things and bad things.

But what they are beginning to teach in that yard are known as PLV – Permanent Love Values.

It is important that children feel safe with that strong fence while they are in the process of learning PLV’s.

However, if the fence is a poor on, the PLV’s are weak, children don’t feel safe.

One thing to note is that merely hanging out in the yard is tribal. They are working out of a set of rules that work for them - rules they learned from their parents. In the yard, as long as those rules are kept and followed, things go well.

However, once they leave the safety of that backyard, they discover the world does NOT follow their rules.

Street:

The street is the danger layer. This is where the cars and the trucks are that can hurt the children.

Mommy knows how dangerous this street is and she knows that the children are unendingly fascinated by what lies out there.

Present Love Feelings (PLF) are experienced in the street.

These feelings are electric, challenging and ecstatic love feelings.

Diffuse people are those who go out into the street and absolutely love it.

How does one go from small adventures in yard to big bad world of the street?

This is the transition that is the most difficult for people.

Infantiles:

These are the people that, when they run out into the street, find out how dangerous it is and run back to the safety of their yard. They are unable to build PLV’s of their own. They demand and take them from others.

The parents job is to teach that child how to deal with that dangerous street.

Vocabulary for this week

Mature Love

Immature Love

Love Authority

Tribal Love

Significance

Love Therapy

Total Depravity

Love Ethics

Irrational love

Victorious Love Output

Permanent Love Values

Present Love Feelings

Diffuse

Love Demands

Infantile Love

Homework

How was love defined and expressed in your family?

Read Building a Love Ethic, Spiritual Immaturity, and Defensive Spirituality. (Articles by Keith McCallum from Neozine.org)

“How is it possible to change a relationship with parents unwilling to change it?”

This page has the following sub pages.

• Vocabulary

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