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Watered Down Love
Written by Jessica Harris   

The more you water down love, the more room lust has to swim. As we step further and further away from the love God intended for us, we drown ourselves in our own lusts. Today, we find ourselves neck-deep in a swamp of lust, and we have become so accustomed to it that love and lust are no longer distinguishable. If you spend years drinking dirty water, you never miss the clean water. But if we stepped back for one moment, back into the love God has for us, and drank in deep, it would cleanse us- mind, body, and spirit- and revolutionize us.

Love, today, is just a word. A young boy may come running in from outside and exclaim, “I love football.” He plops down to lunch with grimy hands and says, “Oh! I love peanut butter and jelly! Thank you, Mom, I love you!” That poor mother has now been put on the same level as football and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Did that little boy mean, “I love you just like I love football and pb &j!”? Of course not. But that wild throwing around of ‘love’ is what drags us into the swampland.

If we thought of love the way God thinks of love, we would be a changed people. A college professor of mine used to say, “You don’t love chicken patties. You can’t have a covenant loyalty with chicken patties. All you are going to do is eat them.” He challenged my class to not say the word love unless we were referring to a ‘covenant loyalty.’ That’s what the word love is intended to reflect. It is not meant to reflect a sheer enjoyment or pleasure.

God loved the world but were we pleasing Him when He loved us? No. Romans 5:8 tells us that God’s love is demonstrated because while we were sinners, God still loved us enough to send Christ to die for us. While we were sinners. God wasn’t getting any enjoyment out of us; we weren’t pleasing Him. If anything we were disappointing Him to the hilt. Still, He loved us.

It is this kind of love we are commanded to have as children of God. As humans, though, we are taught to have a conditional love. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. We love to whatever degree and at whatever time is convenient for us. When someone makes us happy, we love them. When someone ticks us off, we hate them. That is not love; that is lust, and it is in this pseudo-love that pornography has its roots.

When we see love incorrectly, everything associated with it is seen incorrectly. If love is lust-based, then our interactions with the opposite sex will be twisted. We draw this incorrect conclusion that if so-and-so loves me, then they will please me. That carries over into our marriages too. Many marriages fall apart because the couple is ‘no longer in love.’ Translated, that means, “he/she is no longer making me happy.” Coincidentally, when we view love wrong, we also view joy wrong. When we are focused on our pleasure and a ‘love’ that is based in that, we find a temporary satisfaction called happiness, but nothing lasting.

There is nothing lasting in lust. All things are temporary. Lust is never satisfied. It always craves, desires, hungers, and thirsts for more. It is forever non-content. Love, however, chooses to be content, and is therefore satisfied. It thirsts, desires, and hungers, only to love more. It is a permanent (covenant) choice that influences our interactions with others, regardless of how we are treated by them. True love brings a true joy because it chooses to love and says, even in the hardest of times, “I will not leave you, because I have chosen you.”

Pornography teaches us a love based on personal pleasure, regardless of the other person’s pain- physically or emotionally. It teaches a self-gratifying, self-serving lust with not a hint of true love in the works. While it may involve sex, sex without the foundation of true God-honoring, God-given love is nothing more than an animalistic impulse. Pornography robs us of one of the greatest gifts we have been given as people- the opportunity to love.

If pornography is third party within a marriage, it causes tension. A wife may constantly wonder, “Do I measure up?” Men can wonder the same thing. It fills the intimacy of a marriage with uncertainty, with fear of judgement, with shame. Something that is supposed to be a complete abandon, trust and joy becomes something empty and dry. That husband and that wife are unable to love each other because pornography is in the way.

The same effect holds true when pornography touches a friendship or even a family. “What does she think about when she sees me?” “I will never be as pretty as the girls in those videos. How could he love me?” It cripples us emotionally, filling us with so much suspicion and fear that we can neither love one another nor allow ourselves to be loved.

This leads to an overwhelming frustration and entrapment in a deadly circle. A woman faces a world of men crippled by the power of pornography and she wonders where all the great men have gone. In an attempt to find any man, she lowers her standards and her morals, trying to find any scrap of attention. In response, men (even those not affected by pornography) search for that diamond in the rough and wonder where all of the good women have gone. In lieu of not being able to find a women with any sense of dignity they lower their own standards. Rinse and repeat.

We’ve poisoned ourselves. We’ve watered down love to the point that it is no longer love. It is no longer free, it is no longer joyful. When we drink in lust we find ourselves unable to carry out the most basic command we are given- to love.

Comments
  •   |121.213.26.xxx |2010-08-28 00:45:34 Jeff
    I appreciate this post,

    I was talking to a Priest just about 30 minutes ago about Love. I realize that you are
    specifically speaking of 'Agape' love because in the beginning of this article, because you refer to How God Loves, and
    if we thought that way. the hardest part for me is the switch in this article is the switching from Agape to Eros to
    Filios...I agree with you about what you say about porn thrashing one's ability to love, but I also think that in order
    to get to the point is that we have to not only talk about what it does but also talk about the different contexts in
    separate statements. I know that the 3 kinds of love the bible speaks of are interconnected, but using 2 or 3 in the
    same article gets confusing if not explained and smashed together as 1. What I mean is the way God loves us is Agape
    love and it is; never changing, patient, kind, what 2 Corinthians says about love. Eros love is the love between a man
    and a woman in marriage or erotic love. and Filios being the love for a close friend or family member.

    So I kinda
    want to challenge this article, I believe it to be a great article, by the way, but I just would like some
    clarification. I see the progression of the whole context of 'Love' as single and linear the whole way through, where if
    we look into the different ideas placed with them, I find Agape in the part where I read about God's love and we are to
    love as God loves(woohoo), Eros when I read about how Porn affects in marriage(100% agree)...and Filios in how we react
    to a certain situation, wh...
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  •   |121.213.26.xxx |2010-08-28 01:16:48 Jeff
    when someone upsets us and we don't necessarily like them as much because of what they have done. If we were to take
    them into individual contexts then we could break down the areas of Love that Pornography affects. Because it affects
    all 3; Agape - demeaning the value of human sexuality that God intended, Eros - breaking down marriage by letting our
    erotic love meant for one to be given to another, and Filios - the loss of the ability to simply have a friend without
    them becoming an object to satisfy the 'need'.

    I believe Porn breaks into and affects (not only, as I mention above)
    Filios love the most as it is the one than all people desire and long for as God created us for relationship
    (friendship). To switch between all 3 loves in one article, generalizing love as 1 is confusing, and could be unclear to
    people, such as myself, as to the message of this article and the meaning of Love.

    Also, with regards to loving someone
    even when they hurt us, I don't believe that disliking someone or even hating someone means we stop loving them, unless
    we choose that too. If the circumstance arises that someone does hurt us, God does not call us to pretend like it never
    happened. being angry with someone for what they did is normal, disliking someone for hurting me or someone else is not,
    'not loving them'. Jesus disliked people, but He loved them through it. It's human.

    Yeah sorry tangent...but I just see
    in this article places where I would like to see in brackets: Agape, Eros and Filios, and if we put them in, would the
    context st...
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  •   |121.213.26.xxx |2010-08-28 01:17:19 Jeff
    context still be the same? It might be beneficial to write an article about how porn affects each type of Love, because
    putting them in as one spins me out.

    I had some other stuff to say, and I don't know if anyone can see it cuz the last
    post got cut off...it actually said what i really wanted to say but I tried to write it out in this post...it's not the
    same but...

    I would like to talk about this more, if anyone would like to chat...

    Peace
    jeff
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  •   |96.231.155.xxx |2010-09-01 15:50:44 Jessica
    I am going to have to sit back and read through your posts again just to make sure I understand what exactly you are
    saying. I'm trying, I really am!! :-)

    I know I think differently about this than many other people. I think that
    maybe if I explain where I am coming from it will help clear it for you, and that might be my fault for bouncing around
    in the article. (In my defense, I wrote this MONTHS ago and a lot of my personal thought has been challenged in that
    time).

    My mindset is this: the love we are COMMANDED to show as Christians is Agape. Period. That love will
    demonstrate itself at times in the same way that Phileo (friendliness) and Eros (sex) demonstrate themselves, but it
    never changes to become those loves. I am not married, so take this for what it is, but as a woman, when my husband and
    I are intimate, I would hope it would be driven by an agape love, not by an eros love. If I am friends with someone, I
    pray that that relationship is grounded in agape love not the 'feel good- hey I like you' Phileo love. It may be agape
    DEMONSTRATING itself in the same manner that eros and Phileo do, but the motive is completely different.

    My point
    in this article is that there is only one love we are to have-- Agape. It oversweeps the others, but we are not taught
    to have Agape. The world teaches us to have Phileo and Eros loves, both conditional and neither really love at all
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  •   |121.213.170.xxx |2010-09-04 21:22:38 Jeff
    sorry if I sounded harsh in my last posts, I was not trying to attack you...

    I hear you about Agape Love needing to be
    present in eros and phileo love, my point was just that it's not always...especially in the world we live in today. I
    was confused because even though Agape is the unconditional love, we do love in conditional ways (which is a bummer, but
    we still do).

    I feel like we are saying the same thing in different ways. However I do disagree with Phileos and Eros
    not being real love, it is real love, it's just Human, as we are not perfect, neither can our love be unless perfected
    through God...which is Agape love...so that's a bit confusing for me, I don't quite get it...but somehow it makes
    sense...

    100% on the hopes that our relationships are grounded in Agape love.

    Agreed that Agape Love doesn't become
    Phileo or Eros Love. But those loves, if understood correctly lead us to Agape Love.

    Again apologies if the way i wrote
    made you feel attacked, that's not what I meant to do.

    Peace
    Jeff
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