Lust, Romance or Love?

love

It’s Valentine’s Day and people around the world are celebrating their love for each other in a variety of ways …. but what is love?

The messages are confusing. Is it a deep sense of caring? Is it all about lust? Sex? Romantic feelings? Sacrifice for others? Is it emotional or even chemical? Is it a combination of some of these factors? All of them? None of them? What is love? (Of course whenever anyone asks ‘what is love’ there are many of us who immediately respond in our minds, ‘baby don’t hurt me’ in honour of Haddaway’s early nineties song.)

Even if you don’t consider yourself a religious person it’s worth looking at what Paul wrote about love around 2000 years ago. I reckon what he had to say still holds up pretty well when you’re trying to define a word that has attracted so many meanings over the years.

1 Corinthians 13

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (New Living Translation)

When I compare the way I love others to those words I realise that I’m a million miles off the mark but it’s a wonderful standard and one worth striving for every day.

When we describe love as simply a feeling, even a very strong or intense feeling, there’s no security that it will last because feelings come and go. When we experience love as a commitment to seeking the best for someone else, knowing that they’re committing to the same for us, there’s a security that continues even though the feelings wax and wane.

On this Valentine’s Day I certainly hope that you’ll be able to share those wonderful, intense, romantic feelings that come with being ‘in love’ but I wish even more for you. I wish for you a commitment that continues through the best and even the worst of times. I wish you love.



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We’ve Been Sold a Lie

hookup

The idea that we should save physical intimacy for marriage, or even a committed, long-term, loving relationship, has long since given way to the promise of as much guilt free, casual sex as we desire.

The quaint, old notion that we should ‘save ourselves’ for one person comes from an era that encouraged sexual repression; a remnant of a time where we were expected to adopt someone else’s strict moral code. Welcome to the new order. Welcome to the ‘hook-up’ culture.

But is the ‘hook-up’ culture delivering on its promise?

Columnist Miranda Devine suggests that rather than providing the freedom it promised, the hook-up culture encourages “behaviours and attitudes that damage women, and threaten the health of society.”

And it’s not just Devine trying to impose her moralistic ideas on the rest of society. She backs up her thoughts with recently published research.

Sex and human connection, let alone love and compassion, have effectively been decoupled in the hook-up culture, in which dating has given way to no-strings-attached physical encounters.

The term “hook-up” is exactly as dehumanising it sounds, and a fascinating study by the American Psychological Association last month shows how disconnected are the sexual behaviours and private internal desires of young men, and especially young women. – Miranda Devine

We’ve been sold a lie.

We forgot that actions always have consequences and that some of those consequences won’t become apparent immediately. Intimacy isn’t just about sex, so when we disconnect physical intimacy from a deeper knowing of someone else, the intimacy that comes from long term commitment and the desire to always seek the best for the person we love, we don’t just break someone else’s moral code, we break something deeply embedded in the human soul.

Sex without commitment doesn’t provide the safe environment that fosters the security and acceptance that we so desperately seek. Not only does it not satisfy in the short term, it can rob us of contentment in the future.

In a new book, The End of Sex – How Hook-up Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled and Confused About Intimacy, Donna Freitas has compiled eight years of research into a revealing exposition of Gen Y life.

“Amid the seemingly endless partying … lies a thick layer of melancholy, insecurity and isolation that no one can seem to shake. College students have perfected an air of bravado about hook-up culture though a great many of them wish for a world of romance and dating.”

Among her most striking findings from American college campuses is that 41 per cent of students “expressed sadness or even despair” about hooking up. These students suspected it robbed them of healthy, fulfilling sex lives, positive dating experiences and loving relationships. At its very worst, hooking up made them feel ‘’miserable’’ and ‘’abused’’. – Miranda Devine

So the very thing that was supposed to provide freedom seems to be leaving young people feeling unfulfilled and empty.

People have been looking for physical closeness as ‘entertainment’, without the commitment and constraints, and it’s just not working. While many might claim that they want one-night-stands and ‘relationships’ without the strings, the evidence clearly shows that at the heart of it all, we still yearn for deeper relationship.

Saddest of all is that while most men and women did not expect a romantic relationship as the outcome of a hook-up, fully one third of men and almost half of women “ideally wanted” such an outcome.

Anyone who has much to do with young people will have observed a sadness beneath the polished, perfected surface of Gen Y’s smiling girls.

As the mother of boys I have had only glimpses of the existential pain of young women but it is enough to make my female heart ache. – Miranda Devine

Let me encourage you to read the full article by Miranda Devine.



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Porn on the Brain

DrWilliamStruthers
Pornography used to be something hidden and shameful. In recent years it has become disturbingly mainstream. It’s talked about regularly on television and portrayed as normal as well as being discussed in general conversation.

Research shows that 35% of Internet users in Australia have viewed pornography or visited a sex-oriented matchmaker site. That’s around 4.3 million Australians.

Author and acclaimed Neuroscientist Dr. William Struthers is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Wheaton University and author of the book Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography hijacks the male brain.

“Our reproduction organs are often given too much attention in the discussion of sexuality,” say Dr. Struthers. “It is the brain, however, where we feel the sexual longing, the arousal, the focus and the ecstasy that comes from sexual intimacy.

Pornography takes human sexuality out of its natural context, intimacy between two human beings, and makes it a product to be bought and sold.”

“Repeated exposure to pornography changes the way our brains see each other. Repeated exposure to any stimulus results in neurological circuit making. Pornography is the consumption of
sexual poison that becomes part of the fabric of the mind”

He’s just finished touring Australia giving audiences an insight into the harmful effects of porn. I had the opportunity to chat to him just before he jumped on a plane to head home. You can hear our conversation by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
GuiltyPleasure
If you’d like more information about how porn is affecting our communities or how to break free from pornography, vist the Guilty Pleasure website.



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Someone Else’s Daughter

We’ve known for years that sex sells. Many advertisers take the lazy way out when trying to sell us more stuff that they figure they’ll just drape a scantily clad woman across the product then wait for the money to start rolling in. They use women simply as objects to sell other objects.

A car owner in Oregon has now decided to follow in the footsteps of these mental giants and drape a young woman across his old Datsun. After all, sexualised advertising has been working for decades so why shouldn’t he use sex to sell his car?

The difference is that it’s his own daughter that he’s using in the advertising.

In a bid to sell his vintage car on eBay, Kim Ridley, from Oregon, decided to enlist the help of his 20-year-old daughter Lexxa – by getting her to pose provocatively with, and on, the car so he could upload them to his eBay site.

More than a dozen images show the tattooed, pierced-lip, bottle blonde leaning over the Z-Series, some with a birds-eye-view shot of either her cleavage or butt cheeks – which are just about covered with a pair of black panties. – Daily Mail

There’s been quite an outcry, and rightly so, yet the interesting thing is that people aren’t so much commenting on his actions in using female body parts to sell a clapped out car, it’s that it’s his daughter. Interesting.

It seems that people wouldn’t have been so shocked if it was someone else’s daughter.

People are suggesting that he should have used a professional model. That confuses me. Aren’t professional models women too? Aren’t they someone else’s daughters?

If we’re OK with other people’s daughters being used as objects, why wouldn’t we be OK with our own daughters being treated that way?

When contacted by AdFreak, Mr Ridley revealed he does not regret his decision saying: ‘If I felt bad about it, I wouldn’t do it.’

Not only that, but he also admitted to using sexy snaps not only of his daughter, but also her friends in a bid to sell his wares on eBay. – Daily Mail

When we allow other men’s daughters to be used to sell objects we treat those women as objects. When we treat any woman as an object we dehumanise them and we give our own daughters the message that that’s all they’re worth.

If we want to teach our daughters how they should expect men to treat them and honour them, we need to let them see the way we treat other men’s daughters.



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What is love?

It’s Valentine’s Day and people around the world are celebrating their love for each other in a variety of ways …. but what is love?

The messages are confusing. Is it a deep sense of caring? Is it all about lust? Sex? Romantic feelings? Sacrifice for others? Is it emotional or even chemical? Is it a combination of some of these factors? All of them? None of them? What is love?

Even if you don’t consider yourself a religious person it’s worth looking at what Paul wrote about love around 2000 years ago. I reckon what he had to say still holds up pretty well when you’re trying to define a word that has attracted so many meanings over the years.

1 Corinthians 13

1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (New Living Translation)

When I measure up the way I love others to those words I realise that I’m a million miles off the mark but it’s a wonderful standard and one worth striving for every day.



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