Natasha Crain – Christian Mom Thoughts Blog – Must Follow for Christian Parents

What Does It Mean to Love People?

Nearly everyone today appeals to the moral necessity of loving one another. In fact, I’d venture to say that the greatest sin in the mind of popular culture is not loving others. If someone says or does something publicly that the cultural love police deem unloving, that person will be raked over the coals.

Not only does our culture assume that the importance of love is self-evident, it assumes that the definition of it is as well. Phrases like “love is love” and “love is all you need” are plastered on t-shirts, billboards, and bumper stickers to remind us all of how simple love should be to understand.

When we’re talking about rescuing a puppy from a tree or heroically saving a child from drowning, people generally do agree on what a loving response is. But the shallow simplicity of bumper sticker slogans is revealed when we begin asking other kinds of questions:

• Is it loving to take your child to a drag queen story hour in order to teach them about “diversity”?
• Is it loving to encourage a 5-year-old biologically male child struggling with gender dysphoria to start living as a girl?
• Is it loving to make sure a pregnant teenager can get an abortion?

For many in our society, the answer to these questions is as simple and self-evident as the answer to the question of whether to rescue a drowning child: “Yes these actions are loving…and if you can’t understand that, there’s clearly something wrong with you.”

In reality, however, these questions require a more nuanced discussion of what it means to love others.

(There's much more)