Good News: "All You Need is Love"

Ah, those Beatles.  What couldn't they answer about Life's multiple dilemmas?

I've been reading Timothy Keller's book titled Counterfeit Gods.  It is a fascinating look at what motivates the human creature to elevate other forms of 'dust' to the status of idols.  At the core of his discussions is the built-in capacity for worship which we humans possess. 

He quotes from C.S. Lewis at one point, and I have gone to Mere Christianity to expand the quote more fully.

Lewis writes:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage."  (Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis).

The Beatles weren't so far off course with their hit song - since love is a requirement for the human spirit to thrive. It may be safe to say that love is the common ground in the human experience.  We have a capacity to love, and a hardwired need to be loved.  Lewis is saying the reality of this powerful desire points to a probability that love exists, outside of ourselves and of humans in general. And that is why we crave it.  We are designed to receive love. And we endeavor to give love, to, in fact, love others, because we are made for love. 

The popular secular culture of our society, and many that have proceeded us, is bent on pursuing romantic love as the ultimate fulfillment, as the defining reason for our existence. And yet at every turn, human love disappoints, because human love flows from conflicted human beings who battle an unrelenting impulse to see 'self' elevated.  Keller writes about Ernst Becker's book The Denial of Death, which explains the "various ways secular people have dealth with the loss of belief in God." He continues, " Now that we think we are here by accident and not made for any purpose, how do we instill a sense of significance in our lives?.... We look to sex and romance to give us the transcendence and sense of meaning we used to get from faith in God."

There's a reason we love. There's a reason we desperately need to be loved.  Love is the currency of our souls. Love is not a contrived thing, though we do disfigure it greatly.  Love exists apart from us, and is the outflow of a self-existent, loving God.

That's the Good News in a nutshell.




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