Love's Opposite

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

Elie Wiesel

Grief vs Love

 

Lust vs Love

Lust is in opposition to love It means to set your heart and passions on something forbidden. And for a believer it’s the first step out of fellowship with the Lord and with others. That’s because every object of your lust—whether it’s a young coworker or a film actress, or coveting after a half-million dollar house or a sports car—represents the beginning of a lie. This person or thing that seems to promise sheer satisfaction is more like a bottomless pit of unmet longings. 

Lust always breeds more lust. “What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you?” (James 4:1). Lust will make you dissatisfied with your husband or wife. It breeds anger, numbs hearts, and destroys marriages. Rather than fullness, it leads to emptiness.

Stephen & Alex Kendrick, The Love Dare, pg.117

To Love Is to Be Vulnerable

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.

The Evil of Violence

Love Must Be About More Than Externals

A man who loves a woman only for her beauty doesn’t love her. Those relationships are doomed to end sooner or later—often sooner. But well-meaning parents and a well-meaning society do young women no favor by denying the importance of looks in attracting a man. And a woman does neither herself nor her marriage a favor if she denies the importance to her husband and therefore their marriage of her trying to remain physically attractive. . . . 

It is often countered that men’s looks are also important. But they are rarely as important as a man’s personality, masculinity, brains, power, or wealth in attracting a woman. The power of the visual in men is simply far greater than the power of the visual in women. The fact that physical attractiveness is not distributed at all equally… is one of the many built-in unfair features of life.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Genesis: God, Creation, and Destruction, pg.343

Men, Think Before You Say to a Woman, “I Love You”

My father counseled his four sons never to say “I love you” to a woman until they were ready to follow immediately with “Will you marry me?” Nor should they think of saying “Will you marry me?” unless they had first said “I love you.” How much pain and confusion would be averted if men followed that rule.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion & Purity, pg.94

Romance vs Love

Romance is fleeting, but love is long.

Romance is flying, but love is a safe landing.

Romance seeks perfection, but love forgives faults.

Romance anguishes as it waits for the phone to ring to bring a voice that says sweet things, but love is the anguish of waiting for a call that assures you someone else is safe and happy.

Romance is suspense, anticipation and surprise, but love is dependability.

Romance is dancing in the moonlight, gazing deep into desired eyes, but love is saying, "You're tired, honey, I'll get up this time."

Romance is delicious, but love nourishes.

- Anonymous

The Dangers of Lust

Lust is in opposition to love. It means to set your heart and passions on something forbidden. And for a believer it’s the first step out of fellowship with the Lord and with others. That’s because every object of your lust—whether it’s a young co-worker or a film actress, or coveting after a half-million dollar house or a sports car—represents the beginnings of a lie.  This person or thing that seems to promise sheer satisfaction is more like a bottomless pit of unmet longings. 

Lust always breeds more lust. “What is the source of the wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you?” (James 4:1 HCSB). Lust will make you dissatisfied with your husband or wife. It breeds anger, numbs hearts, and destroys marriages. Rather than fullness, it leads to emptiness.

Stephen & Alex Kendrick, “The Love Dare,” pg.117

Depths of Value

During the Iraq war, a woman soldier lost her hand when it was blown off by an explosive device that landed near her.  As she was being rushed to the hospital, she kept crying out, not for the hand she had lost but for the ring that was on that hand—her wedding ring.  One of her fighting mates returned to the place, found the hand, and brought back the ring.  

What an amazing transposition of values.  The ring was the band that symbolized her love and union with her husband.  In a dramatic realization of what really mattered, she could live without the hand but wept for the loss of the symbol of the spiritual bond of love.

In some of life’s most defining moments, we find depths of value that shallow moments never reveal. Squandering our existence in the shallow end of life, we miss all that is found in the deep end of discovery and beauty.

Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Secular Gods, pg.173

Love vs Lust

From Tim Challies' blog

A True Solder

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

G.K. Chesterton

True Love vs Counterfeit Love

Just as true love displays love for the whole person, counterfeit love in the form of premarital sex is detrimental to the whole person (perhaps to a greater degree than anything else).  Sexual immorality harms the emotions.  It clouds both the intellect and our ability to make godly decisions.  It causes social uneasiness.  It wreaks spiritual havoc.  It can have permanent damaging repercussions physically.  Nothing is safe from the damage it can do.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" pg.199

Love Is Not Free

They have invented a new phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -- "free love" -- as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.  It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

G. K. Chesterton, "As I  Was Saying," pg.267, cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," pg.125

Is It Loving?

Love vs Lust

In his new book, Lust, [Simon] Blackburn presents an updated vision of lust as sexual desire for its own sake.  If lust now has a bad press, Blackburn wants to be its public relations agent.  Lust is inevitably compared with love.  Blackburn understands the quandary, noting, "We smile at lovers holding hands in the park.  But we wrinkle our noses if we find them acting out their lust under the bushes.  Love receives the world's applause.  Lust is furtive, ashamed, and embarrassed.   Love pursues the good of the other, with self-control, concern, reason, and patience.  Lust pursues its own gratification, headlong, impatient of any control, immune to reason."  As a moral philosopher, Blackburn understands that love requires knowledge, reason, and time, combined with truth and trust.  Lust, on the other hand, is symbolized by "a trail of clothing in the hallway" that represents a loss of reason, self-control, and discipline.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, p.13

Freedom to Love is Freedom to Hate

Which is more loving, a God who creates a world in which love is possible or a God who creates a world in which love is impossible?  It seems reasonable that a loving God would create a world where love is possible and can be experienced by creatures who are designed “in His image.”  But a world in which love is possible can be a dangerous place.  Love requires freedom.  True love requires that humans have the ability to freely choose; love cannot be forced if it is to be heartfelt and real.  The problem, of course, is that people who have the freedom to love often choose to hate.  That’s why freedom of this nature is so costly.  A world in which people have the freedom to love and perform great acts of kindness is also a world in which people have the freedom to hate and commit great acts of evil.  You cannot have one without the other.

J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity,” p.136

Be Careful When You Say "I Love You"

My father counseled his four sons never to say "I love you" to a woman until they were ready to follow immediately with "Will you marry me?"  Nor should they think of saying "Will you marry me?" unless they had first said "I love you."  How much pain and confusion would be averted if men followed that rule.

Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity, p.93

Love

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Antoine De Saint Exupery