On Worldly Wisdom and Stupid Internet Quotes (#1)

In my time spent on Twitter (@ChazMooney) and Google+, I've come across countless nuggets of worldly wisdom. So, I've started to collect the worst of them one at a time, like lent from a belly button. As I accumulate them, I'll post them here with what I hope is a reasoned, biblical response. I've tried not to be too snarky, but some of these quotes deserve a somewhat curmudgeonly response.

"Love isn't all about flirting, hugs, kisses, and sex. Love is about having the ability to take all those things away and still having feelings for that person." --unknown

Let it be clear, I'm not opposed to feelings, flirting, hugs, and kissing. They are all wonderful things that add to the goodness of this life. However, they must never be confused with love. To equate love with feelings is to cheapen love and eventually kill it. According to this bit of prepubescent Internet wisdom, love is the ability to have feelings for someone despite the lack of certain types of physical and emotional contact. This is nonsense. People do not have direct control over their feelings. No amount of will power can make you feel a certain way when you don't. If it were a matter of the will, no one would ever feel hungry, or sad, or depressed, or anxious. This is simply contrary to the human experience. What we can do is change the patterns and habits of our life in such a way that we can systematically, but slowly and indirectly, begin to change the way we feel. This is done partially through flirting, hugs, kisses, and mutually edifying sexual contact (within the confines of a marriage relationship only). One can also foster good "feelings" toward loved ones by praying for them, by complimenting them behind their back, and secretly and repeatedly doing random acts of kindness for them. All of these things indirectly alter the way we feel, but we cannot just choose to feel a certain way at any given moment. Feelings are good, but they are fleeting.

Love, on the other hand, is a sheer act of the will. It is choosing to put another before yourself. It is choosing to sacrifice your own feelings, aspirations, resources, and opportunities to seek the best for another person. It is risking your life to save another. It is daily cleaning and caring for your wife who has Alzheimer's and treats you poorly because she has no idea who you are. It is spending your life's savings to adopt a child whom you've never met and who will sadly live out the rest of her days in an orphanage if you don't. It is willfully dying on a cross for the very people who nailed you to it.
The confusion of love and feelings has tragic consequences, not the least of which is the destruction of marriage. Marriages often end because married couples often don't "feel" in love anymore. Or, because one spouse "feels" more in love with another person. Love is a commitment for better or worse, in sickness and health, in richness and poverty, and in times of feeling and no feelings.  Whoever wrote this bit of wisdom needs to grow up and quit thinking like a 6th grader. 

"Having a rough morning? Place your hand over your heart. Feel that? That's called purpose. You're alive for a reason. Don't give up." --unknown

This one immediately stimulates my gag reflex, resulting in incessant dry heaving. It sounds as if it was written by a middle-class 12-year-old girl who is high on puppy dogs, glitter, and fairy dust. As a Christian, I would obviously agree that life is infused with purpose, and every moment is thoughtfully crafted by our Almighty God with his own glory in mind. There is no purposeless moment. However, this quote gets at the heart of our vaguely and irrationally optimistic society. We (in America) are a culture that loves things like hope and purpose and yet we reject God. What, therefore, is the source of our hope and purpose? We have none. As Francis Schaeffer illustrated in The God Who Is There, our culture has taken an irrational leap of faith toward faith itself. We don't have faith in any known God who is actually there and has actually done something to which we can look forward, but we have faith in faith for faith's sake. I don't wake up in the morning and blindly choose to have faith that everything is going to be alright; I'm convinced by reasonable reflection, the constancy of God's provision, and the self-authentication of God's Word that faith in Jesus Christ has secured for me an eternal inheritance and a resurrection body of which I will one day take hold. That is why my day has purpose, and that is why I can get through bad days. I don't get that optimism, however, from some subjective feeling that I receive by feeling the beating of my own heart. At any moment that heart could stop. What hope will I have then?

"Sometimes, you have to give up on people. not because you don't care but because they don't."

 This is a bit of Pharisaical sleight of hand. The one saying it sounds noble and places the blame squarely on the one who does not reciprocate. I'm not suggesting that I have never wanted to "give up on people." I certainly have, but that is a sin for which I must repent--not a sin for which I must give a self-righteous justification. This idea leaves its speaker on a higher moral plane than the one spoken of, a concept that is foreign to the Scriptures. Even the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest Christians to live declared himself, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, "the chief of sinners."

The Scriptures call us to love the world that hates us. Jesus said to follow him is to "take a up your cross." Through the prophet Hosea, God modeled his relationship to his own people. Hosea was told to take a prostitute as a wife and to pursue her with his deepest love and devotion all days of his life even if she continually committed adultery. God, forgive us if we "give up" on anyone.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? 

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 

(1 Corinthians 1:20, ESV)

Please, comment below with the worldly wisdom that you find on the Internet.