Ideas Have Consequences

LOVE (10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Series)

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 2 • Episode 50

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Can love truly heal our broken world? It might sound romanticized, but perhaps that’s because we haven’t fully explored the depth and weight of love. In this episode, we dive into a chapter from Scott Allen’s new book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World. We need to reshape our understanding of love, moving beyond the superficial definitions that dominate modern culture. We will explore love's concentric circles, from its joyful beginnings to the profound commitments of agape love. We also discuss how love must be grounded in truth.

Have you considered the impact of postmodernism and secularism on cultural perspectives of love? Getting the meaning of love right can heal and unite society. This episode offers practical insights on living out God’s understanding of love, urging us to make it a central practice in our daily lives. Don’t miss this compelling conversation that challenges misconceptions and calls for a return to authentic, life-changing love.


Today, the definition of love has been abbreviated to two simplistic concepts: (1) A source of pleasure, joy, or delight. (2) A strong affection, often accompanied by romantic feelings and sexual attraction. Several other facets of the true meaning of love have been removed from our culture’s thinking. These include: (3) To value, cherish, or treasure. (4) Fidelity and devotion. Faithful commitment. (5) To seek the good of another, to give for his or her benefit, even at a significant personal cost.

Scott Allen:

So love is truly the thing that holds everything together. I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that it's what you want more than anything at the end of the day, and that's so true. We want to be loved. Hi friends, this is Scott Allen, president of the Disciple Nations Alliance, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.

Scott Allen:

As we prepare to launch my newest book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words, we wanted to go through each one of these 10 foundational words that are highlighted in the book, discussing their true meaning as well as how they've been fundamentally redefined in our contemporary culture. Now you might be asking why do words matter? Well, it's because words and definitions shape the way we think and feel, and that, in turn, determines our choices and our actions, and that shapes the kind of culture that we live in, for better or for worse. And so if you want to work for a positive change in culture in society, it has to begin by restoring the true meaning of our most important words.

Luke Allen:

Hi friends, welcome to the final hoorah of the 10 words series here on Ideas have Consequences. As we introduce the brand new book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the true meanings of our most important words. We're so glad that you have chosen to join us today. My name is Luke and I will be your host today, and I am joined by my friend and boss, Dwight Vogt. Hey, Luke, yeah, thanks for joining. And the author of the new book is Scott Allen, the only person who can accurately quote the famous Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker quote about his paternal relationship to him.

Luke Allen:

Dad, how are you doing today?

Scott Allen:

I am your father Luke, I've heard better, that's my best Darth Vader imitation. I'm not very good at that. Okay, that works.

Luke Allen:

Anyways, back to the book Again. The title is Ten Words to Heal Our Broken World. If you'd like to pause the discussion right now and go grab your book, you can actually do that, because the book is out. It's on Amazon and pretty much everywhere else you get books. I've included a link to the Amazon page in the description so you can find it there. But if you'd like to learn a little bit more about the book before making that order, you can head over to the book's landing page on our website. You can search that under 10wordsbookorg and pretty much on that page you can find all things 10 Words Book, including the endorsements, the introduction to the book as well as the accompanying video series that we created for the book. So again, that is 10wordsbookorg 10wordsbookorg.

Luke Allen:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, for today's episode we are going to be unpacking possibly the most powerful word in the world, that being love. As you've heard us say many times here over the last few months, if you want to change a culture, you begin by changing the language. Any ideology, religion or leader who is not a fan of Christianity and wants to change the culture to their inherently anti-Christian agenda must start by redefining or changing this word that is really at the center of the gospel in our faith. So the biblical meaning of this word love is and always has been under continuous scrutiny. Word love is and always has been under continuous scrutiny. So to get us rolling today, dad, if you could just share with us your best attempt at defining both the true, accurate and hopefully biblical definition of love and then contrast that with the false, shallow redefinition as you lay them out in chapter 10 of the book.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, thanks, luke. You're right about this being perhaps the most important word that we're going to look at in this 10-word series. You know, love is right at the center of who God is. The Apostle John, of course, says that God is love. Whoever loves knows God and is born of God. So you know, it's a hard word to define concisely, because God is infinite, you know. But understanding this becomes really really important to understanding who we are and the Scriptures and our mission, because, at the end of the day, I really am convinced that love is the way that God and we as the Church, go about bringing change in this world. That's the one word that defines it and that's different from our enemy, satan. He uses lies and he uses fear. Those are the tactics of Satan and the people that are working in his army, if you will. They use fear, they use lies and deception, but the followers of Jesus use love, and love is the most powerful force for change in the world. So here's a couple of things you know as I lay out these definitions, luke. First of all, it was hard to define love concisely and what I ended up doing is I had to look at it kind of like Cohen-centric circles. You know, there was kind of a broad general understanding that got more and more specific and you had to understand them all. They all fit together. So removing any one of them did damage to the concept. So let me just kind of walk through those Koen-centric circles, if you will, starting with the broadest.

Scott Allen:

Love is a source of pleasure, joy or delight. Love is a source of pleasure, joy or delight. And then I'm going to move downward and deeper as we go here. Secondly, love is a strong affection accompanied often by romantic feelings or sexual attraction. Thirdly, love is to value something highly, to cherish it, to treasure it. And now we move into these deeper realms of love that move out of feelings and move into will and choice. So love is both a noun and a verb. That's really important to recognize. It involves feelings, emotions. We understand that. It involves feelings, emotions. We understand that. But at these deeper levels it involves choices that we make, acts of our will, kind of regardless of the ebb and flow of our feelings or emotions. Let's move on to those.

Scott Allen:

Love is fidelity, meaning devotion, commitment, faithful commitment, the kind of thing that husbands and wives do in a marriage ceremony, where they promise they literally promise to be faithful to each other until death, do they part? It's the kind of love that God has for us that we use the word covenant to describe. And then, lastly, at the deepest level, the most profound level is the word agape. The most profound level is the word agape, that is, to seek the good of another, to seek their well-being, even at a significant cost, even at the cost of your life, without any kind of expectation of payback. It's completely selfless, it's completely sacrificial and it's done for the good of others. This is the deepest and most profound level of love.

Scott Allen:

Now, moving on from there to talk about how love is understood in our culture today, or how it's been redefined, our culture, because it's largely very secular, has stripped God away. So what's left? You basically have this kind of shallow end without any of the depth. So here's how I looked at this love redefined as we understand it in the culture today. Number one it's a source of joy or pleasure. That's retained.

Scott Allen:

Number two this idea of affection is still retained, often accompanied by strong feelings of romance, sexual attraction. So that's still retained. But once you get to that point, there's really nothing more to it. All of those deeper levels have been stripped away. So what's gone is the idea of highly valuing or treasuring something. Faithful commitment is stripped away and certainly agape. This idea of doing good for another, even at significant personal cost, is not present anymore, and I think in our postmodern times too. Again, the heart of postmodernism is this idea that I create reality, I determine what is true, I determine who I am, and within that framework, love then becomes affirming that right. So love in our kind of present-day culture is—this is a word that's really important it's affirmation, affirmation of what somebody holds to be true about themselves. To not affirm that is to be unloving. That's probably the biggest way that love has been redefined in our contemporary culture.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, with that false redefinition. I just think of those slogans that we see all the time in protests and marches nowadays, and the little lawn signs in the front yard of people's houses Love is love, love wins, love wins yep.

Scott Allen:

Those are viral hashtags, by the way, and they're all in promotion of same-sex marriage and things like that, or anything on the LGBTQ spectrum.

Dwight Vogt:

Let's say yeah On your first one, scott just for my sake, or anything on the LGBTQ spectrum. Let's say so. Yeah, on your first one, scott, just for my sake. Source of joy and pleasure. Delight yeah, yeah, well give me an example of that real quick.

Scott Allen:

I love pizza.

Dwight Vogt:

Oh, okay, I love the Oregon Ducks. It's the inanimate things kind.

Scott Allen:

I love my wife you know, I mean, I was just reading actually, this morning in my devotion I was reading in Proverbs, chapter 8, which it's talking about wisdom. But it's talking about how wisdom existed at the creation of all things. You know, it's this ancient thing that was there at the very beginning and was there. It was present when God was making the heavens and the earth and the stars and separating the waters, In Genesis 1, there was wisdom there and it uses these words delight and wisdom delighted to see what God made. You know, it took pleasure in that and I just think it's so important, you know, not to dismiss this.

Scott Allen:

I think a lot of Christians I grew up in a kind of a Christian environment where this was kind of dismissed as almost being a secular thing, like love, I was taught love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will and there's truth to that. But it goes too far, Like, if you separate these emotions of delight, of joy—I mean, this is the way God feels about his creation, it's the way he feels about us, he loves us, Like he really takes joy and delight in us. That's so important to realize. Yeah, go ahead, dwight.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, you're touching a bell here. Yeah, because usually you think of God as creating perfect. He's holy, he's separate, so he's created things perfect and it's like the diamond. That is flawless, it has no wrong. But if you think of creating something that you like, like pizza, I mean there's delight. And I'm thinking of God creating the universe and just delighting in it. That's a whole other God. He's perfect, but he's also a delighter.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, he's full of joyer, you know, and he delights in that. Yeah, he's full of joy and delight, he takes pleasure. I mean, this is a really different thing than, let's say, buddhism, right, where, if you feel these strong feelings, if you're a Buddhist, you're encouraged to kind of beat them out of you, right?

Dwight Vogt:

Exactly.

Scott Allen:

And the goal of life is to have no feelings, no emotions, you know.

Dwight Vogt:

That's not.

Scott Allen:

Christianity, that's not God, you know.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, desire and delight is actually the problem we face. It's yeah in Buddhism, so remove that. You know Right, exactly.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, that just causes you pain and it does. I mean they're right about that, right If you, you know loving something in the sense of delighting, in it.

Scott Allen:

You know, can be a source of pain.

Dwight Vogt:

Right For sure. You know what, what, what? What good is life if you get a bad pizza and can't admit it? So this is a bad pizza, I was hoping for something really better than this.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I mean. So I think it's really important to emphasize that. I think—I want everyone listening to really reckon with the idea that God loves you and what that means is that he delights in you, he really loves you. And often people struggle with this too, because they—you know the Bible. When we get to agape, you know it includes loving your enemies. And people struggle with that, naturally because it's like I don't delight in my enemies, they're trying to destroy me. How do we do that? Like? Is pleasure-delight removed from that idea? And I don't even think it's removed there, because it's not that we delight in our enemies, but we remember that God does actually that. God created them and loves them and delights in them, wants them to be saved. For sure he hates the sin and the injustice. It stirs up his wrath. So that's also there and that can't be diminished. But God is a God not just of wrath. He's a God of love, which means he delights in people that he created and really longs for them to be saved.

Dwight Vogt:

Your second definition is close to that it's affection which is you have affection for those things you delight in, and to think of God as really having affection for his creation and for his human beings that he made. There again, you tend to think of the sinfulness of humanity, but God has affection for every person.

Scott Allen:

Absolutely. And that word affection, it's a good word to kind of ponder on that a little bit, because that's really close to understanding love. I think we feel affection for things we long to be near that bring us joy and delight. We just want to spend time with people that we have a close affection with. You know, your friends, your children, you know you just feel this strong affection. That's love, that's, you know it's a beautiful thing.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, I sometimes think of you know, and how can God have affection on somebody who's just, you know, wickedly opposed to him? But I'm thinking of has an eternal perspective and he can pull back, just like a parent is looking at a crying child that's having a tantrum and they're like three months old, and you go. Well, the child's having a tantrum, he's three months old, but oh, you feel such affection because you see the perfection in your creation. Anyway, you see the beauty of that.

Scott Allen:

That's right.

Dwight Vogt:

You can look past sin.

Scott Allen:

That's right, exactly, Dwight. You look past it in some ways. You look forward. You know that famous passage in 1 Corinthians 10 that talks about love. One of the things that it says about love is love hopes, all things. There's this looking beyond what things are and hoping and what they can be, the change that can happen. We don't just see the child as just a disobedient child that's driving me crazy but we look beyond that to what they can be, Wow.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, and that hope never gives up.

Scott Allen:

And it never fails, it never quits. Yeah, it never fails, just like the song yeah and that hope never gives up and it never fails. It never quits.

Luke Allen:

Just like the song. Yep, I like how you laid this out, dad. It's funny. It's just hitting me now, the way that you did the Cohen centric circles going in. It's like a target starting at the widest circle and it's a source of pleasure, joy and delight. And then the strong affection comes in a little bit closer and a little bit closer. I remember talking about this with you. Last it was Christmas, I think. We were sitting around chatting about how do you sum this up, all these different meanings of love as it goes in on the target and I like that.

Luke Allen:

You made them all a part of the definition. They're all a part of that target. They're all there for a reason. It's not. It is kind of like the outermost circles are a little cheaper and the innermost ones are the most valuable in a way it's kind of shallow to deep in some ways in a way, yeah, but they're all there.

Scott Allen:

It's not untrue, it's just you know.

Scott Allen:

So it's not like that's not true of love to say hey, I love the oregon ducks or whatever. That's not untrue, it's just shallow, right, it's a shallow use of the word, yeah, yeah.

Scott Allen:

And then you get deeper.

Luke Allen:

I'm sure you wrestled with this when you were working on the definition, but you know, in Greek they use different descriptors for the different types of love. Cs Lewis did this as well in some of his writing. Why do we use love to describe so many different meanings, do you think? Why is there this one word that cloaks all of that? Because it's really confusing.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, it is. It took me a long time to get my head around it, even just trying to write this chapter. Actually it does kind of—it challenges you to come up with a concise definition, really concise. I think that you can get more concise than I did here. At the same time, it's one of the deepest things in all of reality because it captures the very heart of God himself, and that's deep. That's not shallow, and that's deep. That's not shallow.

Dwight Vogt:

And I often, as you were talking about the concentric circles on the outside in, I'm thinking, yeah, they're a little bit, they're shallower and people can grasp them better. But when you think of pure delight, that's not shallow. When you think of pure affection, that's not shallow. So they all have a depth to them. But wow, put them all together and you have this incredible, powerful word.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and at the deepest level, what I call the deepest level. You're right about that, dwight, but just this idea of agape is just so incredibly powerful. There's really nothing like it anywhere else in any other belief system, worldview, religion that exists. It comes out of God's heart and, of course, it manifests itself most clearly on the cross, you know, with Jesus himself dying for us, taking our place so that we wouldn't die and that we could have eternal life. There's just nothing like it. It's just so powerful and when you see, it lived out when Christians, when they've been so shaped by that that they bend it, if you will bend that horizontally into our world, there's just nothing more powerful to see. You know, we're always blown away by it.

Scott Allen:

It could be a soldier that throws his body on the grenade saving his comrades, or, you know, it could even be I often think of Corrie Ten Boom forgiving, you know, forgiving the concentration camp guard that was responsible for the death of her beloved sister, because God had forgiven her right, you know, and it carries just the power to change, like nothing else. And this is, you know, we at the DNA we're all about. You know, we want to see Christian mission, christian change in this world for the better. You know, that's really at the heart of our mission. We want to see nations discipled and I don't think there's any more potent thing to see that than this kind of love in action.

Luke Allen:

You know, by this you will know that they are my disciples. If you love one another, yep, yep, yep.

Scott Allen:

That's our calling to change the world. It's to be people that are so, that have so been deeply filled by God's love that we then can like. You know, I like that idea of taking that kind of bending it vertically to the world. That's right at the heart of what our calling is.

Dwight Vogt:

I'm thinking too about the agape level and one of the challenges there is we can all kind of think of yeah, I've had a couple of agape moments, you know, I've loved them that way, but it's usually well, that's something extra, that's something extra special, that's something yeah, we attain, we want to attain that and aspire for it. But then we think of God and he's like 100% all the time, never wasn't, never. Always is that level of love, and that's pretty amazing that God never wouldn't have an agape moment towards his creation towards us, towards the worst person we know, you know.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I don't mean to over-dramatize it. I think there's a way we practice agape love too, you know, in kind of everyday life, just this my goal here today is to seek the good of those around me. Agape is utterly other-centered. You know, what can I do today? Not to make me feel better or elevated or whatever it is, but what can I do to help you to be all that God wants you to be. That's a daily thing that you do in all of your relationships, that you should anyways. And you know what can I do to work for the good of those around me today without expecting you to reciproc? And you know what can I do to work for the good of those around me today without expecting you to reciprocate? You know, this is actually there's a real mystery here too, an incredible thing that when you do that actually, even though this is a very selfless thing to do, god has created the universe in such a way that, when you do that, that actually becomes in some ways the most exquisite form of joy that you can experience. Right, it circles back to delight and joy again, actually, which is kind of interesting at that deepest level, that when you actually do this, it brings you great joy.

Scott Allen:

Luke, you remember that there was a children's book that I read to you and the kids when you were younger. When you were younger, it was a great book. I wish I had the name of it. It's just a profound book. Yeah, this lady made this exquisite quilt but she wouldn't give it to him, and I can't remember. Eventually she said I'll give it to you if you give it to someone else. And he just was going crazy with that, like I need that, I need that, I need that. And then finally he sold everything to get it and he got it. It's the kind of pearl of great price idea. And then when he, you know, when he gave it to others, he experienced joy, you know, like he, you know, satisfied. It's a really powerful story of love.

Luke Allen:

Oh, that's totally true, though. I mean we're made to be selfless, that's what we were created to do.

Scott Allen:

Yeah.

Luke Allen:

And if you ever meet someone who's just hasn't experienced that and then all of a sudden they just give and they experience that for the first time, it's wow. That brought me so much joy, because it's what our hearts are created to do is to help others out.

Dwight Vogt:

It's also one of those times where you actually at least from my experience, it's when I feel free. Yes, it's not just joy, but all at once you're not focused on your own needs and your own. What am I getting out of this? You just feel completely free.

Scott Allen:

You really are closest to God in that moment and that means you're closest to being who God created you to be. You're right there, at the center of that right. You're really reflecting that image and there's just incredible freedom and joy in that, you know. So you guys are exactly right.

Dwight Vogt:

So it's a good thing.

Scott Allen:

It is a good thing I was going to tell the story. You know I lived in Japan, dwight. You lived in Asian cultures too. You know, I lived in Japan for a couple of years and one of the things when I, you know I love Japan, right, it's a remarkable country. I'm going to say something slightly critical here, but not of Japan, of any culture, before it's been kind of deeply discipled, let's say, in this biblical understanding of love. And that is when I got there.

Scott Allen:

They had an understanding of—like they have a high value on gift-giving. You know, they're incredibly generous in that way. But there's a little phrase, ongiri, which means it's kind of reciprocal. Like if I give you a gift, then you know I'm kind of obligating you to give me a gift back, right, like I scratch your back, you scratch my back. You know that was kind of very deep in the culture and to the point that I even heard people say be careful about giving gifts, because you're going to really obligate yourself, you're going to put yourself into a deep pit, like you know, you're not going to be able to repay.

Scott Allen:

That, you know, and I thought, you know it was wild for me because it was the first time that I had kind of to reckon with this idea, that I didn't think that way. I thought you should just give gifts and not necessarily expect somebody to give you a gift back. But then where did I get that idea right? You know well, I got that idea from a culture that had been pretty deeply discipled by the Bible and this biblical understanding of love, in a way that, let's say, the Japanese culture yet hadn't been. So you know, I just thought it was very interesting. You know that kind of cultural. So you know, I just thought it was very interesting. You know that kind of cultural. You know, we want all cultures to experience this understanding of love. This isn't just for Western cultures, for every culture. But it was my first experience of a culture that didn't have that idea yet.

Dwight Vogt:

So very deeply, scott, in your writing of the book, many times you took a postmodern look at the word, which is what's really happened to many of these words. Right, what did you see with this precious word love? I mean, what was your reaction to the postmodern redefinition of love.

Scott Allen:

How did postmodernism change it? In a postmodern culture, yeah.

Dwight Vogt:

Just the implications of that.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, yeah, so I talked about it earlier. I think that what you know, when you remove God from any of these words, you really destroy the concept and it becomes something really different from what it is. And that's so true of this word love. And in our current time we've become secular and postmodern. Secular in the sense that we've kind of stripped God out of life and of culture and we presume that he, you know, you can believe him if you want, but he's a fairy tale, he doesn't really exist and stuff. We live in a material universe. And then postmodernism is the idea that I kind of create reality and that has to be affirmed. So I often think, you know, one of the most helpful things for me in understanding postmodernism was that terrific, you know video of that young kid going on to the University of Washington's campus asking people, asking the students these crazy questions. You know, you know if I, you know he's a white, 30-year-old male, you know, probably about five foot nine inches tall, five foot eight, and he says, if I told you I was a six foot four Chinese woman, you know what would you say? You know, he literally asked them these questions I mean hilarious questions and they struggle to answer like well, you know, and what they're doing is they're living out this postmodernism of if that's what you think you are, if that's what you have, if that's how you define reality, it's not. It's not define reality, it's not my place to tell you you're wrong. He even asks them, he says would you tell me I'm wrong? And they oh well, that's not really my place to kind of draw lines or boundaries like that. That's classic postmodernism, lived out. I mean, I don't know if these kids would be able to even define postmodernism, but they're just living it out, right, and you know.

Scott Allen:

So then, love, what is love within that kind of a framework or context? Love is just affirming that, right, you know. Oh, you're a six-foot-four Chinese woman, good for you. Hey, you know, I believe in you. Good for you. That's the loving thing to do, right, okay, but the Bible's like no, you know.

Scott Allen:

Again, going back to 1 Corinthians 10, love rejoices in the truth. It can't be separated from God, can't be separated from the truth. I mean, we're talking about basic truths. You're not a six-foot-four Chinese woman, okay, I can't affirm that, I can't rejoice in that. That's not love, okay. Love and truth are inseparable.

Scott Allen:

And this gets a little bit serious on this, because those lies actually, right, the Bible says they destroy, right? If you just take transgenderism, you know that's a lie. Okay, you are not a woman. If you're a man, you're born a man and if you live that out, that's going to be destructive for you. To love you isn't to affirm that, you know, it's to be gracious and careful, but it's not to to say yes, I affirm that in you. It's to speak the truth because the truth is loving. It's not to say yes, I affirm that in you it's to speak the truth because the truth is loving. Again, this is where it gets back to the agape. It's what is good for somebody, what's for their good, not for their harm or their destruction. What are your thoughts?

Dwight Vogt:

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, dwight and Luke, I'm just, yeah, I'm thinking of that video too and I'm thinking, but the challenge with love being affirmation is it's also limited to affirming really what you agree with, because in our culture today, we're not about affirming somebody who disagrees with us.

Scott Allen:

We're not affirming across the aisle, so to speak.

Dwight Vogt:

Right, we actually don't have a word, a love definition to reach across the political aisle. And it goes both ways, I mean I have friends that are not well associates whatever not you guys but I disagree with politically. It's like, well, I have to love them now. No, you're right.

Scott Allen:

You don't see that in the contemporary culture.

Scott Allen:

Dwight, love them now, you know, but without that deeper definition of love— no, you're right, you don't see that in the contemporary culture, dwight, we're losing that right.

Scott Allen:

So you just become these implacable enemies and I can't talk to you. I mean, here we are at Thanksgiving week. I can't go have Thanksgiving dinner with you as my family member if you disagree with me politically, you know.

Dwight Vogt:

So we're losing love you know, so we're losing love, you know, because our definition doesn't isn't broad enough for that.

Scott Allen:

It's not broad enough for that, no, it's too shallow, it's yep, exactly we, we, we are losing love, we're becoming unloving, we're becoming, which is the opposite. Of love is to you know, I mean well, there's a lot of opposites to love. You have to look at every one of these facets of it and look at the opposite of that.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, it's really sad, though, to see this postmodern definition of love coming into churches, because I've had so many discussions with Christians about it. The discussion's framed as if they're diametrically opposed. Are you on the truth side of things or the love side of things? As if they're diametrically opposed. Are you on the truth side of things or the?

Scott Allen:

love side of things. Yes.

Luke Allen:

Do you want to you know, love your neighbor through telling them the truth, or do you want to love your neighbor through being loving to them? And it's like no both.

Scott Allen:

You really hit it, Luke. You cannot separate those.

Scott Allen:

Keep talking I don't want to interrupt you, but you're really right on it there.

Luke Allen:

I've always been one of those people that just loves the truth, and I don't have a problem sharing the truth with people, and yet a lot of people say that's so unloving that's so unloving that you would say the truth and I'm like.

Scott Allen:

I insensitive but that's.

Luke Allen:

That's at the heart of who I am is. I want to love everyone of God's. You know people.

Scott Allen:

That's it's a command love each other. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up, luke. This is really the biggest concern I've got around this word love is that this false, secular, postmodern understanding of love as affirmation. Just at the very shallow end the separation is coming right into the Church, and boy, this is such a huge error. Right, and Darrow often says you know, we've got the sacred-secular divide that we've talked a lot about in these podcasts, but we've now got the truth-love divide. Like these, truth and love have been scandalously separated, and the Bible never separates them. God is truth and God is love. He's both. You can't separate them, and yet we've done that. Just like you've said, luke, in the church, if you speak truthfully, something that's—what's the word I'm looking for, you know seen as— Not PC.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, not politically correct, right? Or just it's—yeah exactly. You know something that's insensitive to say to somebody you know, then that's not loving. You're not loving them and you're not a loving person. So even to speak truthfully is to be seen as not loving today, in a lot of our churches and this is a huge mistake you never— if you separate truth and love, you lose both. That's the key thing. You lose both.

Dwight Vogt:

Which is the strength of the word agape, Because the word agape, as you defined it, Scott, is seek the good of another and it's completely selfless. So you're seeking the best for the other person. You're always seeking the best of another person, which can never be out of alignment with truth, because what could possibly be good about a lie?

Scott Allen:

That's right.

Dwight Vogt:

And yet it's completely selfless. So you do what you have to do to get that truth across. I mean, sometimes I hold, sometimes I don't speak the truth because I know now's not the time. The truth comes in 10 minutes, but it doesn't come now.

Luke Allen:

People always lay these extremely black and white scenarios for you and say choose one or choose the other.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, it's not like that.

Luke Allen:

Okay, christian, you come up to someone who's homosexual and you get two options. Either you walk up and say I affirm you, I agree with you, I accept you, I love you, and then you walk away. Or you walk up and you say you're a sinner, you're wrong, what you're doing is going to send you in the wrong direction in life. And then you walk away and, as a Christian, we're always like what do I do? I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself, you know, and yet those are just such. That's not the way that Christians act in the world, either of those. So how do we act, ed? How would you fix that scenario without separating truth and love?

Scott Allen:

Well, I'm going to play the Jewish scholar and turn the question back to you, Luke. How would you do that?

Luke Allen:

Well, the truth is yes, we love our neighbor as ourself, and we have to know that people that don't know God are not going to be following his will or his word, because they don't know it. And therefore I am going to see that person as an image of God first, and foremost. That is what connects all of us as humans.

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Luke Allen:

And uh, therefore, I am going to love them, because God loves them and they are a beautiful creation that he has made and takes great delight in.

Scott Allen:

So I start there. See them with that, that, that eyes.

Luke Allen:

And then I see sin as something that is a mark upon humanity that, um, we are all sinners, something that is a mark upon humanity that we are all sinners and that that doesn't have to be them, but it's a part of them right now. So keep that in mind as well, and that Christ can take that sin away. So, then, I want to start with. You know, we always talk about this, but you want to start with beauty, and love is a type of beauty.

Scott Allen:

Beauty is the gateway to goodness and truth. Yeah, love is very beautiful. When you see it, it's one of the most beautiful things you'll ever observe exactly or experience. St.

Luke Allen:

Augustine, love is the beauty of the soul. So I want to share hospitality with them. I want to love them. I don't want to affirm them, that's different, but I want to love them. I don't have to say I agree with your sin and I accept it, but I can still love them. There's a difference there and that's extremely important. And then from there you befriend them and you you take delight in them and you move down the concentric circles of love.

Luke Allen:

And then you, you know, you become deeper, a deeper love, a deeper love as your relationship flourishes. And then you, you know, you become deeper, a deeper love, a deeper love as your relationship flourishes. And then, eventually, you're going to get to the point where you seek the highest good for them, and that, of course, is to turn away from sin, just as it is for all of us.

Scott Allen:

But you don't?

Luke Allen:

you don't exactly start with that in the first word and then walk away. No, you know.

Dwight Vogt:

I mean maybe in some scenarios, but most of the time, you know we need to—that's what Jesus did, right.

Luke Allen:

He befriended the sinners, invited them over, had a meal or went to their house usually had a meal and then sinned.

Scott Allen:

But he never affirmed their sin you know, go and sin no more, you know, think of the woman at the well you know, is a good example of this.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I often, you know, in this discussion I think I was so moved by the testimony of Rosara Butterfield. You know many of our listeners will know her. She's written many fantastic books. She's a Christian, but she wasn't always. She was actually a lesbian activist, you know, professor of women's studies, I think, at New York University, and really hated Christians, really hated the Bible. I mean, she was just really hostile to kind of Judeo-Christian sexual ethic and so she was actually on a tear, kind of on a rampage, to tear it down, you know, during these days of her life. And then she talks about how she became a Christian through—she was writing articles and posting articles in the local newspaper there in New York and a pastor there in the town who later became her husband, you know— he did.

Luke Allen:

I don't think so oh maybe I'm wrong. Okay, I thought he did A different guy, I believe. No-transcript. Okay, well, yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Scott Allen:

Anyways, he was reading these articles that were just railing against the Bible and against Christianity, you know, from an LGBTQ activist, it would have been easy for him to say, oh, she's my enemy, whatever. You know, I don't want to have anything to do with her. But he actually loved her enough to write you know, figure out how to write her a letter and invited her over to his house for dinner. And she came and he showed her incredible hospitality and love and grace. But, you know, he did confront her, you know, on her sexual sins and her wrong beliefs. And she says later that that was so important that he did that. You know that just affirming her in that would not have been loving, you know, and she recognizes that.

Scott Allen:

But he didn't start with it. He started and he had a genuine affection for her and I think that affection was born out of God's affection. Right, you know, we don't really have enemies at the end of the day. You know we have, lord willing, potential future brothers and sisters in Christ. Right. And so he saw beyond, right, you know the hostility and the anger. You know somebody's lost here, they're going to be destroyed. And he saw beyond it, invited her over for a meal, showed this hospitality and love, grace, just the power of that. And then eventually you know, she became open to the truth and repented, and you know, the rest is kind of history. So I think those stories are so important that's what it looks like to hold them together, you know right, and not separate them.

Dwight Vogt:

I'm going to pivot a little bit here. But, Scott, as you wrote this chapter, what surprised you?

Scott Allen:

That's a good question. Did you have an?

Scott Allen:

aha, when you were writing about love yeah, I think I started writing with a struggle, dwight, to put these two ideas together the idea of love being joy, pleasure, delight, a feeling, an emotion, you know, because I think you know, growing up in the church I'd been kind of taught that—I wasn't really taught that that was wrong, kind of was. You know, I remember hearing a song as a young Christian and it was literally love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will, and I was always grateful for that song because there's such truth to that and it's really important, right. I mean, there's times where you just have to choose to love, even apart from how you feel at that moment, and we're grateful that God does that right to us, that he remains faithful and committed, even when we're completely rebellious and unloving, I'm sure, but he doesn't quit on us, he doesn't give up, right, he sticks with us, and so I'm grateful for that. But I guess I struggled with how do you kind of reconcile that with these, you know, is it wrong? So one of the big ahas for me in writing this chapter was just to see how these all kind of came together and fit together, and I think I have a better understanding of that now than when I did at the beginning, dwight, and just how they're so essential to each other. You can't, if you remove one from another of these facets, you do damage to the concept and you don't want to do that, you know.

Scott Allen:

There's one other thing maybe I should bring in here too. We haven't talked about it when we talk about true kind of genuine biblical love, and that is this idea that love, genuine love, is rightly ordered. There's an order to it. St Augustine taught this in the fourth century and of course it's right in the Bible itself. And so when we think about the order of love, we have to think about these basic relationships. Love is about relationship, right, and we think about the most basic relationships at creation, right, god exists and then he creates everything, and then he puts an order to it in Genesis, chapter 1, right, he places man, adam and Eve, male and female, in the Garden of Eden and he gives them a, a role, kind of a hierarchical ranking of you know of, of order in creation, as rulers. Right, as people that are to have dominion. And so you see this kind of ranking in in Genesis, chapter 1. That goes something like this God is the highest, he's the creator of everything. He's the king. Next comes man, male and female, made in his image, and then thirdly comes creation itself. Okay, we have relationships with all of those things, but they're not all equal in terms of their importance.

Scott Allen:

So the Bible says it's really important that your love be ordered based on that ranking. This is really just again, a really fundamental piece of truly understanding love. We're to love God first, right, and then we're to love people, right, love your neighbor and then creation. You can love creation, but you can't get—if you get those out of order.

Scott Allen:

If you love creation or the things of this world money, cars, whatever it is, things that we make or God makes the stuff of the world if you love those more than people or you love them more than God, the Bible calls that idolatry. It's a very disordered love. It's still love, but it's very disordered and it becomes evil actually. And so that order, by the way, is completely absent in redefined love. There is no sense of this at all, this important issue of ordering. But true love has to be correctly ordered. And then, when you love God first, if you make him the source of your greatest joy, your primary relationship, everything else kind of flows from that right You're able to love people and you're able to love creation rightly, and then, when they're disordered, you don't. Nothing works right. Love your thoughts or comments on that, it's just a really important piece of the puzzle here.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, I would need to think about that more, but one example that just came to mind when you were explaining that is um, you can't really, like we've already said, have agape love, seeking the highest good for another, even at a perceived expense to yourself, without loving god. So, like with my wife, if I have a disordered love for her and love her more than God, that turns into idolatry.

Scott Allen:

Right.

Luke Allen:

And this kind of toxic codependent relationship where there is no agape love possible anymore and it becomes that's taken out of the picture because I've ordered her above God. Therefore. I can't seek the highest good for her anymore, because I don't know what the highest good is, because God is not my highest good anymore.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, you've put all of your joy and happiness and meaning in life onto your wife and she's not able to carry that burden right, she'll let you down, or you can think about your kids, or friends or whatever it is, she'll let you down. Or you could think about your kids or friends or whatever it is. They'll let you down. Only God, as the Creator, is able to carry that load, and so this is, I think, why there is this kind of importance of ordering things in this way. It's good.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, luke, yeah, I just listening to you explain that I'm thinking yes, that's absolutely right. Why didn't I think of that?

Scott Allen:

You have thought of that, dwight. No, but it's true. I just brought, I'm bringing it up here.

Dwight Vogt:

so yeah, I mean. God is love and order flows from God, and so order is love, and order is part of love. And yeah, I mean, it's all through the Bible.

Scott Allen:

You know the Ten Commandments, the First Commandment. You know you shall have no other gods before me. You know, hear O Israel. You know the Lord, our God, is one. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. That's the very first commandment.

Scott Allen:

Love God and because God is a person, by the way, god's not an impersonal force. You can love God, you can actually have a loving relationship with God. I remember when I first became a Christian, way back in high school, when God got a hold of my heart. You know, it was Young Life and I was on this sailing trip up in the islands of British Columbia and God had been working on my heart. The Holy Spirit had been, you know, working, but finally, you know, he broke through and I just was sitting alone with this person and I just felt this overwhelming love from God. You know, it changed my life Like I can't believe. I'm that loved.

Scott Allen:

And you know your response to that is to love God back. I mean, this is, you know, we can love God and that's the most important. The Bible says that's the most important thing you can do. And then the second you know the New Testament is very clear. The second is like it, which is really fascinating. It's like it Love your neighbor. Why is it like it? Because your neighbor bears God's image, right, it's. You know, bob Moffat, our good friend, makes a big deal out of this, you know. You know this is the end of the day. This is the greatest commandment love your neighbor. You know so.

Luke Allen:

Oh, got a gap there. Maybe I'm thinking this is so deep. I mean, I always go back to the thomas aquinas quote uh to define something fully is to definite it so this, this, like you were saying, dad, love is waters. It's something we'll never be able to fully figure out. So I feel like we're wrestling with that a little bit right now.

Scott Allen:

That's right.

Luke Allen:

You've left us speechless.

Dwight Vogt:

Well, on that note, Scott, any advice to all of us in terms of how to love and understand love.

Scott Allen:

I'm not great. Actually, you know, it was very convicting for me to read this, to write this chapter, because I realized just how I have so much further to go in my own practice of love. Dwight, I think you're ahead of me. I'll just be honest. You know, I think the way you love, I have been inspired by that Luke, same for you, and I have been inspired by that Luke, same for you. So I think it's something that you know we do have to kind of understand. You have to understand it, to work at it, right At one level.

Scott Allen:

You don't the feelings, you don't. You know I love pizza. I don't have to work at that. There's no discipline in that right. But to truly love other people, to love God, you know, to prioritize him, to love him, you know, this is where some discipline does come in, some intentionality and this is where I need to do better. You know, I think for me, one of the opposites of love there's again a lot of words that describe the opposite of love but the one that probably is most convicting for me personally is the word apathy.

Scott Allen:

You know it's not hatred actually. I mean, hatred can be the opposite of love as well, but this word, apathy, I just I don't, I'm too tired, I don't care enough. You know, that's often my situation.

Scott Allen:

It's just apathy. I'm convicted by that. Bob Moffitt, our dear friend and coworker. He has an exercise that he's developed called the discipline of love, and it's just that it's just looking at your relationships and you know your wife, your children, your neighbors, you know whoever you know you have in your life, and making a plan to demonstrate the love of God or just demonstrate love to them in some way today. You know it requires that kind of intentionality. What were you going to say, way, today? You?

Dwight Vogt:

know it requires that kind of intentionality. What were you?

Scott Allen:

going to say Dwight no. I don't remember. Oh yeah, you know, maybe Luke, we can post that.

Scott Allen:

You know reference to that exercise on this podcast. It's a really good exercise, go ahead. Dwight no I do think, though, that apathy is, and that's the opposite, yeah, especially for most of us, it's not hate it's apathy and I'm tired, I don't care enough, you're quoting Taylor.

Luke Allen:

Swift, when you're saying that, right, that's. The opposite of love is indifference.

Scott Allen:

Is that one of her songs? I didn't know that.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, there you go.

Scott Allen:

Okay, we're learning something biblical from Taylor Swift. Okay.

Luke Allen:

Anyways, Dad, what kind of culture does the proper definition of love create when exercised throughout culture?

Scott Allen:

Oh my gosh, you know it's the glue that kind of holds everything together. I would just invite people to try to think and it's a dark thought, but just try to think about what your life would be like without it, if you didn't love, if nobody loved, if nobody loved you, if you didn't love anything. There's a funny story that Nancy Piercy tells in. I think it's one of her. It's not total truth, it's Finding Truth, the book Finding Truth. She talks about how, in our current culture, you've got these hardcore secular materialists, right, darwinists or whatever it is. Everything is matter, matter in motion, and what that means is that we are just clumps of matter, right, we're just kind of highly evolved pieces of matter and energy, right, there's no spirit, and when you have that worldview, there is no such thing as love. By the way, love goes away because love isn't material At the end of the day. It's not a clump of matter at any level, right.

Scott Allen:

And so she's talking about a true hardcore materialist scientist who talks about his own children and he says I have to kind of work at it, but when I do, I can remember that they're just. You know, I think he uses the word robots and then the person who is talking to him says really, really, do you see your children as kind of robots, just material? You know things that kind of function with you know he's like, yeah, that's right, that's what they are. You know things that kind of function with you know? He's like, yeah, I, that's right, that's what they are.

Scott Allen:

You know, um, I mean, speaking out of his worldview is his understanding of reality. And then the interviewer says but is that how you treat them? And he goes no, how do you treat them? I love them. And and I just thought it was it reminded me of something that Darrell often says you know, the test of the truthfulness of a worldview is can it be lived right? Can you really live with that? And he couldn't. He couldn't live with this idea of the world just being nothing but matter when it came to the way he thought about and treated his children.

Scott Allen:

He loved them right In the same way. We're talking about love, right, affection, sacrifice, commitment. But that makes no sense at all in his worldview. So back to your question, luke. What difference does this make? You know you can't live with this idea that we're just matter in motion. It becomes such a dark, dystopian place that none of us can even begin to imagine it. So love is truly the thing that holds everything together. I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, and like we were saying earlier, it's what we're all looking for, it's what you want more than anything at the end of the day, and that's so true, luke.

Scott Allen:

We want to be loved More than power. By the way, you know people say, oh, if I could just have power, money or whatever. It is no, what your deepest longing is for is to be loved. It really is true.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, that's a great place to wrap up Dad Just. It really is true. Yeah, that's a great place to wrap up Dad Just. Before we do so, though, can we let's talk about a couple practical applications for how to live out God's understanding of love.

Scott Allen:

Well, go ahead, Dwight.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, I was thinking about that just as you were talking and it's God as well and I thought, well, how do I agape? Well, and I think, well, I've got to then step back and say what is God's will for this person, what is best?

Luke Allen:

for this person what is good?

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, what's good for them? What is his design? In eternity for my friend Alan, or my brother-in-law Dave, you know. And then, since I don't know, honestly, I may have some ideas. But then to pray in my own heart, god, help me be an instrument that would help them move towards that. Whatever is, your eternal destiny is for that person. Help me to affirm that, help me to encourage that, help me to love them towards that. I don't know what it would look like, but that's what I'm thinking right now.

Scott Allen:

But it's the right question to ask in any of your relationships what does it mean to do? What's good in that relationship for somebody? What does that look like biblically, and then what can I do to bring about that good? For my answer on this one, luke, I would go back to the ordering of love and I just would challenge our listeners and myself here to ask the question what can I do to love God more? What does it mean to love God?

Scott Allen:

And you know, love, at the end of the day too, is just a matter of just time. You know, are you consciously thinking about the person? Are you consciously seeking to know them more? And with God, that's knowing him through creation, through the Bible. Do you want to honor him? Do you seek to honor him? Above all, are you spending time in prayer?

Scott Allen:

Everything kind of flows out of the love that we have in that most basic relationship. So I don't think it's. You know, we just have to continue to prioritize that and seek to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, because everything flows from that. Are receiving God's love and loving him and honoring him and doing what is pleasing to him, what brings him delight. Then you know we have the power, through the Spirit, to love others. You know, and this is again, this is the mission of the church. This is how we change the world. If we're going to see change in the United States in 2024, given all the stuff that's going on, states in 2024, given all the stuff that's going on it's going to be the church truly loving people, loving this world in the way that we ought to. That's going to—because, again, that's what people long for, that's what they want.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, it's such a privilege to be a Christian and to know where to order our love and where to direct it Because otherwise, if you didn't know God, you would always be trying to love things that ultimately wouldn't fulfill and it would kind of bounce back at you.

Scott Allen:

That's right.

Luke Allen:

And so just the opportunity to love God and then to love all the good things that he's given us and write order beneath. That is such a joy. And then to love all the good things that he's given us and write order beneath, that is such a joy, that's my application this week is. I want to delight and enjoy all the good gifts that God's given me, because I can recognize the author and this is Thanksgiving week.

Luke Allen:

This episode will come out, I'm sure, in a few weeks after Thanksgiving, but what an opportunity to be thankful for all the things that I can delight in this week and just to see how much God loves me, all of us and this world that he's given us, and just take great delight in that. So I'm sure that will increase my love for God.

Scott Allen:

Awesome Good to be with you guys.

Luke Allen:

Yeah.

Scott Allen:

Yeah. Good to talk about these important words. We gotta, we gotta uphold the truthfulness and live out the truthfulness of these words and love more than this is the last one.

Dwight Vogt:

Huh, yep, this is it.

Scott Allen:

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, no more, yeah maybe I'll do another book here, 10 more words or something like that.

Dwight Vogt:

You know scott, I was looking at an email the other day. You started in april of 2017 on this topic I, I know, I know. We had a meeting in town here with some friends.

Scott Allen:

That's a long time. Yipes, okay. Anyway, that's just a long time. Thanks for your patience. Anyway, no, it's a good thing.

Dwight Vogt:

It's good that it's out and we're here, yeah exactly Yep, yep.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, this is a great time for this book to be out, dad, so I'm so thankful that it's coming out right now and the more we've talked about this and thought about it, as we've been doing this series on the podcast, as I've been watching the, the videos that were created for this, which I would highly recommend everyone listening 10 videos are all about 10 minutes long, explaining every one of these words in depth and the cultures that the true and the false definition create. You can find those on YouTube and on 10wordsbookorg.

Luke Allen:

Anyways, as we've been thinking about this, these wrong definitions are everywhere in so many of the disagreements that we have in culture, in the culture, war space, a lot of the disagreements in the church, a lot of just denominational schisms and splits, a lot of that's revolved around the wrong definition of these words, which is crazy. The wrong definition of love has split churches. You know, we're the loving church, we're going to do it this way. No, we're the loving church, we're doing it this way. And it's it's so devastating to see exact same thing with truth, justice. For those of you guys who are new to this series, these 10 words are let's see if I can do them off the top of my head quiz myself here.

Luke Allen:

Starting with truth human sex, marriage freedom. Okay, that's five. Authority Authority.

Scott Allen:

Justice, justice.

Luke Allen:

I'll finish it for you.

Scott Allen:

Justice, faith, beauty and love. There we go. I think that was an order too.

Luke Allen:

Such important words. And if you guys are new to this series, then, depending on your favorite learning style, you can learn more about these words by listening to the podcast series that we have now all out on. Ideas have Consequences you can obviously grab the book. That is probably the best way to learn about them. Consequences you can obviously grab the book. That is probably the best way to learn about them. Or, in a couple of weeks, we are going to have a 10 week study guide, a Bible study guide that is going to go in depth on all of these words as well. So a lot of different opportunities for you guys to dig into understanding these true definitions. And, yeah, that will really help you.

Luke Allen:

It's helped me so much just be able to enter these areas of disagreement, enter these discussions that are all around us today and have a good understanding of the biblical view to take in those discussions. And knowing the definitions of these words is just such a great way for us to articulate our faith in better ways, especially in this cultural moment. Great way for us to articulate our faith in better ways, especially in this cultural moment. Again, the book is called 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words. You can find that book wherever books are sold. You can also learn more about the book again on 10wordsbookorg. I have linked both of those down below in the show notes. Yeah, that's it for today, dad Dwight, thank you for joining.

Scott Allen:

I really enjoyed this discussion.

Luke Allen:

It's been good.

Scott Allen:

Thanks, you guys.

Luke Allen:

All right, and that's a wrap on the 10-word series here on Ideas have Consequences. Thanks again for listening, guys.

People on this episode

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Scott Allen

Host
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Darrow Miller

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Dwight Vogt

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Shawn Carson

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Tim Williams

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Luke Allen

Producer