Idolatry of love.

Reading through Jonathan's book The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love has been quite thought-provoking. There's quite a few meaty topics and I felt that blogging briefly through each chapter might make it easier to chew than one big bite of the entire volume. He begins by painting the cultural landscape of the United States, and maybe "the West" at large, and the most prominent thing is a deep-rooted sense of individualism that is arguably the zeitgeist of the current era. The best adjective to attach to this is "autonomous"--autonomous individualism. "The Idolatry of Love" is the name of the first and only chapter in the first part of the book: Love Misdefined.

In essence, love has been misdefined and then idolized. Love has been coated with a non-commitment sheen, been emotivized, been consumerized, and been unconditionalized. There is a lot to unpack here, but Jonathan has some good insight into the basic problem. Although we're in an individualistic society, that does not mean that relationships have been subordinated and forgotten about. Instead, what we find is in postmodern society there is an evermore emphasis on community and the need to find identity with groups of people (this is seen in the Christian landscape with the emergent/emerging church).

Anti-authority-ism is Jonathan's answer. That is the essence of individualism. The opposite of individualism is not communitarianism. People want to be in relationships, but only certain types--the types where the autonomy of the individual is supreme and love is about "non-judging". It's an authority question.

Jonathan goes on in the next part "Love Redefined" to lay out the biblical definition of love. It turns out to be a lot more complicated than it seems at first.

General Updates:

• The outing with Fawaz was not successful, we had to reschedule.
• Grabbing breakfast w/ Dangus, then going with him to help with some visa applications.
• Campus Outreach lunch-meeting later this afternoon to discuss GW.
• YPFP development team meeting tonight where I'll meet all the other staff on the team.

Reading Updates:

• I found an interesting thing technique online called Bible Arcing (www.biblearc.com) that is under the Desiring God umbrella. I've only just started exploring this, it looks like a helpful way to study Scripture.
• Finishing up Gause's Oil Monarchies; about 20 pages left. An average book to say the least.