It?s pretty funny how easily heresy creeps in. Sure it might
take a while to come up with especially if it?s going to be really convincing.
You know, the mulling it over, making the new concept taste right, justifying
it in Scripture and convincing yourself. Yet, when it makes its first
appearance it does so in such a manner that the non-Berean ear may sit there
unaware, smiling and maybe even ?Amen?ing. To see it happen before your eyes is
outright scary.
So are you saying that you need to be smart to be a Christian?
Men have a potential problem when it comes to loving (agape) in that full-servant enjoyment sense. It has been seen plenty of times, a wife gets sick and a husband starts taking care of her and watching over her and his self-perceived role of “husband / lover” shifts to the bitter “caretaker / parent”. In some cases, if an illness is prolonged the husband may detach to the point of remaining in the caretaker role even after his wife gets better.
Mentally, it’s a dangerous place to be in. No longer are the lover feelings being placed on the wife, but she becomes a vehicle of love-bearing or caretaking: self-sacrifice at it’s worst. The difference is so drastic that the husband might transfer his intimate love to something or someone else.
People are often pictorial in their thinking. We may not be very good with amorphous concepts which consist only of words, but when we attach the words to an image the words make sense. For instance, the idea of a “singularity in space and time whose escape velocity exceeds the speed of light” makes more sense when described as a “black hole”. The mind went from a mathematical construction right to an image of a swirling mass of darkness with maybe a little spaceship being pulled into the vortex.
God often employs illustrations to get us to understand what he’s
talking about…be it inanimate objects (the tabernacle) or living
advertisements (Pharoah). One particular illustration in the New
Testament has an incredible double-edge. The word-picture paints a
mural of love for husbands to learn from and at the same time forms
part of the greater canvas of Christ’s love for the Church.