LOVE: Part 1 - What the World Needs Most

On April 15, 1965, just six weeks before my graduation from high school, an album of Jackie DeShannon was released that included a song that has become very familiar: 

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some but for everyone – Hal David

The enduring popularity of “What the World Needs Now Is Love” reflects Hal David’s gift of creating lyrics that resonated with the “interior sadness of daily life;” in particular, the human longing for the sweetness of enduring love.  From what I have read, it seems unlikely that Hal David and musician Burt Bacharach intended their song to be understood from a biblical perspective.  However, the song is both a commentary on human nature and a prayer to God to send more of His love.  The commentary and the prayer remain very pertinent to this day.

Hal David used an additional line in his “prayer” to intensify his point that “the world needs love.”  The song continues, “Lord, we don’t need another mountain.”  Rather, we just need more “sweet love.”

As I listened again to David’s lyrics wafting sadly on the wings of Bacharach’s music, I began to wonder:  Is the world’s problem really that it has too little love?  Or, could it be that there is plenty of love, but many of us have been seeking a lesser love and looking for it in the wrong places?   The answer from the Bible is “yes.” 

The Apostle John, whom Jesus loved, tells us that God loved the world so much that He gave what is often described as His great “love gift” in the form of His beloved Son, Jesus (John 3: 16).   Years after recording those words of Jesus, John declared in 1 John 4: 8, “God is love.”  By this, he meant, that God’s divine Son, Jesus, is not only His “love gift” to the world but Jesus is the very embodiment of love.  And Jesus spoke of His Father’s love to His disciples in this way: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love (John 15: 9).”  As we abide in Jesus’s love, His love, joy, and peace flow out from us to others.  The Apostle John affirms the reality of this flowing stream of love from God through us to others: “We love, because He (God) first loved us (1 John 4: 19).

But, while God’s sweet love is abundantly available, the world continues to plead for more
“love, sweet love” while looking for it where it cannot be found.  Nathanael Blake, in Why Everything Is Wonderful But Nobody’s Happy, And What To Do About It, addresses the concern of many today who realize the inability of material pursuits to substitute for “sweet love.” He laments[JS1] :

…the symptoms of civilizational despair are persistent and worsening. The doleful litany is familiar: Fertility and life expectancy are down; suicides are up; overdose deaths are way up…deaths from alcohol abuse are up. The comforts of modern life have not made us happy, even as material comforts that were once exclusive to the rich have become the norm. Never before in human history have so many, with so much, been so miserable.  Nor has sexual liberation, the last, best hope for materialist pleasure, brought general happiness. …widespread sexual indulgence has left our culture so far from sexual bliss that even The New York Times is running columns lamenting our sexual dystopia.

It seems that Western culture can achieve every goal set before it except to agree upon what  is truly satisfying and enduring.  As social beings, our relational, vocational, recreational, and spiritual lives are incomplete unless we achieve satisfying relationships with others and with God.  We long for assurance and security that can only come from a deeper well than our buckets will reach.  And so, many continue to look for love, meaning, and purpose in vain.  Our frustration from this vain pursuit may explain recent political division and unrest.

Blake suggests that our anxiety over unsatisfied wants is at least partly the cause of the growing percentage of the American electorate who are infatuated with socialism.   However, he notes that expanding government programs are not the answer because prophets, philosophers, and preachers throughout the ages have reminded us, happiness does not consist of the satisfaction of our material desires, for they will never be satisfied. Desire expands to fill the imagination’s capacity.

On the other hand, social and political conservatism holds that true freedom is granted by God, not by government.   We are accountable to God as stewards of His gifts and opportunities to honor Him and benefit our neighbor, not as a means to amass wealth for our own gratification (Ephesians 4: 28).  As Blake explains, those who know that complete happiness is not found in this life…can have gratitude for our material blessings and relief from physical ills, without seeking our happiness in wealth. We can cultivate those virtues (such as humility, charity, patience, and self-control) that mitigate social conflict, and discourage vices (such as envy, pride, jealousy, and lust) that inflame them.

We can also provide an account of human flourishing that explains why happiness and heartbreak are linked. Happiness requires accepting our mortality, but our culture sanitizes and cordons-off death and neglects the philosophical and religious reflection that reconciles us to death and prepares us for it. What our culture needs—recognition of the realities of human nature, the instilling of self-control, living with love and charity in community, and offering hope for the hereafter—is what churches should be preaching and, more importantly, exemplifying.

Unfortunately, we frequently fail in these things (I very much include myself in this indictment), and we will have little to offer an unhappy culture if we are anxious, defensive, and hateful toward our political and cultural opponents. If we do not want those we disagree with to be happy; if we do not model a life of joy for them, why should they bother to listen to us?

The Life and teachings of Jesus as recorded in our New Testament left an unmistakable mark on Christ-followers of the first-century church as described in the Book of Acts.  When the Roman Emperor Hadrian sent a man named Aristides to spy upon the Christians, his report to the Emperor contained these words, "Behold! How they love one another."  The power of Christ’s love among first century Christ-followers was the key to the rapid spread of the “Good News” of salvation across Europe.

Like our world today, the Roman world of the first century was hungry for “love, sweet love”—that ‘greater love’ that comes from God through the “Love Gift” of His Son, Jesus Christ.   In our world where many of us are materially rich but many are also anxious, unfulfilled, and in despair, may we who have God’s love be committed to express His love and lovingkindness (mercy) where it is so badly needed.  Perhaps the lyrics of “Jesus, Friend of Sinners” by Casting Crowns describes our marching orders as redeemed sinners called to love lost sinners:

Jesus, friend of sinners, we have strayed so far away
We cut down people in your name but the sword was never ours to swing
Jesus, friend of sinners, the truth's become so hard to see
The world is on their way to You but they're tripping over me
Always looking around but never looking up I'm so double minded
A plank eyed saint with dirty hands and a heart divided

Oh Jesus, friend of sinners
Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers
Let our hearts be led by mercy
Help us reach with open hearts and open doors
Oh Jesus, friend of sinners, break our hearts for what breaks yours

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Coming Next:  In “LOVE: Part 2 – It's "Out of This World” I want to consider how love is defined and shared through our actions.

Hope for a Grieving Community

On this cold winter night, as northeast Ohio endures its latest wintery blast, many homes in Perry Township, Ohio are reeling from another kind of icy stab.  Yesterday’s news reported that a sixth student in Perry Local School District has committed suicide since the beginning of this school year!

Meanwhile, the Perry Local School administration has been taking this “epidemic” seriously by making what they consider a valiant effort to provide counseling and other means of support to grieving students and faculty.  The school district had already begun suicide-awareness training and counseling sessions last autumn after the first suicide occurred.  However, this week’s report of a sixth suicide must have many in the district wondering what they should do next.

Superintendant Scott Beatty who was born and raised in nearby Massillon, spoke to Fox 8 TV saying, “I think it goes around one word:  Hope.  I would tell our kids there is hope, there is hope.”

I cannot imagine how I would react to this news if I were a parent of the latest victim; or, if I were any parent, teacher, or administrator of this Stark County, Ohio school district.  But as a resident of nearby Wayne County, my own reaction is one of grief and concern for those affected by these deaths.  How tragic that six students who had walked the “halls of learning” in Perry Local Schools had reached the point at which they could find no reason to live another day.  At the same time, while I commend superintendent Beatty for offering “Hope” to his students, I am curious as to what he believes is the object of this Hope.  In my experience, hope without a reliable object or basis for possessing it, is unfounded, unreliable, and unsatisfying.

Thankfully, Perry Township residents are beginning to realize that, with suicides continuing to occur, something more is needed than simply encouraging students and parents to call suicide awareness counselors, helpful as that might be.  A phone call this morning to two friends in North Canton, Ohio provided both disturbing and encouraging news.

What my Google search revealed--key words: Perry, God, religion, church

First, the disturbing news:  Officials related to Perry Local Schools have reportedly refused to allow people of faith to come onto school grounds to offer spiritual counseling.  Many readers will not be surprised.  As we have often lamented, America has removed God from her public schools; so, what should we expect?  But in truth, the erosion of strong spiritual leadership in America’s families began long before God’s disinvitation from public schools.  Deterioration of the family unit has coincided with a neglect of the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, study, and prayer in our homes, the weakening of commitment to the marriage bond, less regular worship and service in a local church, and weakening commitment to exemplary moral living and service to the local community and beyond.

The Bible has been clear in its call for the moral and spiritual disciplines for thousands of years.
Proverbs 29: 18 states: 
Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained,
But happy is he who keeps the law.
Hosea 4: 6 claims:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:
because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee…
seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God,
I will also forget thy children. 

It is not enough to offer Hope. The Scriptures make clear that there is no hope unless we turn to our Creator and submit to His plan for living.   In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul professes that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ because it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe….(Romans 1:16).  But sadly, Paul continues, explaining how humans throughout the ages have rejected the truth of God, exchanging it for a lie, and suppressing the truth.  Professing to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1: 22).

My previous article in Oikonomia, entitled Resolutions for 2018: Pursuing God --On Purpose, emphasizes the fundamental need of every person to know their purpose for living.  Our schools may do well in teaching the three-R’s along with computers, science, and technology.  But our students are facing many additional challenges outside the classroom, such as learning who they are as developing individuals and finding social acceptance and meaningful relationships.  All the while, individual development in mind, body, and spirit, and self-awareness are challenged by social media, poor family structure, access to drugs, and an ongoing deterioration of morality in our culture—an unbiblical morality that no longer regards the ancient foundations supporting biblical marriage and gender distinctions.  

Good suggestions are meaningless without a moral foundation.

Public school science and social studies undermine student moral and social development when they deny that Judeo-Christian principles have any place in these disciplines.  Instead, students are indoctrinated into atheistic, naturalistic evolution which purports to explain human origins by time and chance movements of molecules, and therefore, offers students a view of reality that is without morality and purpose.

But there is also good news for the Perry community.  A network of people of faith has been forming to assist students and parents who are willing to meet with them.  Rocky Perkson, one of my North Canton friend's former students, has announced on his Facebook page a “Community Come Together” meeting on Monday, January 15, 2018 at 5:00 pm at
Canton Baptist Temple
515 Whipple Ave NW
Canton OH 44708
Enter through Door G please. Opposite side of Whipple Ave
The FREE event is open to all and the speaker is Christopher Milo.

While it is true according to Proverbs 29: 18 that Where there is no vision, the people perish, it is also true that happy is he that keeps the law.  The psalmist David, in Psalm 19: 7-11, expands upon the “happiness” of the law-keeper who turns to God’s Word to find wisdom, joy, forgiveness, and warning:

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.

What the young people and families of northeast Ohio and our nation as a whole need is more exposure to Christ-followers—people who have found Hope in the Eternal God and have responded in faith to the call of His Son Jesus.  Jesus laid down the path of a true Christian with these words:

If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow  me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.  – Luke 9: 23-24

God so loved the world of His creation that He sent His Son to give us the gift of everlasting life (John 3: 16). Christ came to replace our fear and despair with Love and Hope.  But surprisingly, this faith transaction requires a “death”—death to self and sin as we are individually buried with Christ so we can rise to new life in which God’s loving Spirit enables us to yield control of our lives to Jesus Christ.  This “death” to self and resurrection to New Life is symbolized by believer’s baptism.

If you are a Christ-follower, a true Christian by faith in the atoning work of Christ on the cross, and His death and resurrection, you may want to become more knowledgeable of teen and even pre-teen suicide in your community and efforts to prevent it.   For example, you may want to locate a church or community ministry that provides support and spiritual teaching and encouragement for adolescents.  Many communities have so-called “Breakout” programs for adolescents to attend during or after school hours.  Why not Google “Breakout” to find the nearest program in your area?

If you are not a Christ-follower, perhaps you would like to learn more about the Eternal Life of Hope that Christ offers freely in response to your faith in Him.  Check out the website for "Steps to Peace with God” which outlines how you can believe and respond to God’s love, how your sin separates  you from God, what Jesus has done to address your separation, and what you can do by faith to receive God’s righteousness (right standing with a Holy God).  If you have additional questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.  Just post a “Comment” below or e-mail me at silviusj@cedarville.edu