“Living a just and holy life requires one…. to love things in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, I.27-28)
The Apostle Paul, wrote similarly…
“Know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving,[1] unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…” (2 Timothy 3:1-4).
The “last days,” in which Paul places this scenario, are not some far-off eschatological epoch, but the period between the first and second comings of Christ, the days in which we now live (Cf., Hebrews 1:1.). Paul describes these days as “perilous,” a word used in the Gospels to describe the Gerasene maniac, a man so dangerous that no one could pass through his neighborhood unscathed.
These days are perilous, Paul insists, because love has become disordered. Five times in this catalogue of vices, he refers to expressions of love that are not rightly ordered. And then he brackets the list with the essential disorder: “Men will be lovers of themselves…rather than lovers of God…”
The world needs love—though it may not be the only thing there’s too little of, Dionne Warwick notwithstanding. But the fundamental problem with the human heart is that we don’t love God and therefore we cannot imagine what authentic love looks like. He has to show us.
The answer to misdirected love, then, is not to insist that we start loving one another—a thoroughly secular notion—because love, apart from God, will always be disordered. We will “love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.”
No, the answer to misdirected love is to know God. He is the truth about love and the source of all the love in the world. In his presence and by his word we are taught the meaning of love. “By this, love is brought to perfection in us” (1 John 4:17).
David Roper
3.10.21
[1] “Unloving”— the Greek term is a rare word astorge, which is the inability to love cute and cuddly things like small animals and baby human beings.
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