TLP 470: Fake Family Love | Family Love, Part 2

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Do you like people when they make your life comfortable, but dislike them when they get in your way? Then you've experienced fake love.

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Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way

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Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent Podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. I'm your host, AM Brewster. And if this is the first time you're joining us,

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I'd like to welcome you and invite you to listen to all of our podcasts from the beginning. Our content is evergreen because God's word is eternally relevant.

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Not only that, but as we enter this next phase of our ministry development, many of our previous free resources are going to be removed and replaced with more robust teaching on the same topics.

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This content will come in the form of online courses, workshops, conferences, and like, and there will be a price tag for accessing that material.

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That's another great reason to consume the material now. Of course, if we can get more donors, we'll be able to continue creating free biblical parenting resources for everyone, you know, which if you ask me, would be the coolest way to do things, you know.

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Another part of this newest phase is a stronger emphasis on TLP's parent ministry. Now that's not the ministry to parents per se, but that's the parent ministry.

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That's the parent of truth. Anyway, Truth Love Parent is a podcast of Truth Love Family and Truth Love Family is part of a larger organization called

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Evermind Ministries. That's the parent organization. Get it? Okay. Well, I started Evermind Ministries many, many years ago, and it's grown from a blog called

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Taking Back the Bible to a robust family of ministries. And Evermind Ministries includes

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Truth Love Family, the yearlong celebration of God, and the newest addition is Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.

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Each of these ministries and the many more that are in development are designed to help God's people evermind his truth and grow in it.

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For example, the yearlong celebration of God focuses on personal discipleship in our worship of God and also helping to disciple the other people in our lives.

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Truth Love Family digs into the various family dynamics, including marriage, parenting, and being a Christ -honoring child, and Faith Tree serves

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God's people through biblical crisis counseling and discipleship training. So I look forward to talking more and more about Evermind Ministries in the coming months, but for now,

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I hope this excites you about the various ways we're trying to serve your family by keeping God's truth at the center of your daily experience.

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And speaking of everminding God's truth, we have free episode notes, transcripts, and other resources available for you at truthloveparent .com.

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Now let's talk about the ever -dangerous fake family love. If you joined me for our wisdom talk last week, then you heard me talk about the fact that our ability to understand the world is tied very closely to our vocabulary.

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By the way, Wisdom is an app whereby we can connect live. I can answer your questions, and you can add to the conversation, and I can provide counsel.

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All you have to do is download the app, which is free. Follow me at AM Brewster and tune in on Wednesday at 11 a .m.

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Eastern Standard Time. And now, if that doesn't work for you to join us live at that time, you can always go back and listen to the wisdom talks after the fact as well.

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Anyway, last time on wisdom, I was talking about the fact that, at least in America, we have very few words to describe snow and ice.

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When I look at ice on a road or a lake, I see it very superficially because I only have a few words in my vocabulary that inform my understanding of ice.

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However, in various northern countries, the people who live there have many, many words that all describe different kinds of ice.

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Such languages have words that describe smooth ice, packed ice, old ice, ice in the sea, drift ice, ice that looks like sand, and there's even a word that refers to the crust of ice on snow formed in the evening after the sun has thawed the top of the snow during the day.

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Now, some of these people groups have 20, 50, or even over a hundred different words for ice and snow.

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And the result is that these people are able to look at snow and ice with a far more critical and knowledgeable eye than the average

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American who looks at frozen water and sees only ice. As a side note, parents, it's very wise to equip your children with a large and growing vocabulary.

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As our vocabularies dwindle, so does our ability to think deeply and broadly about life.

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And even better than giving your family a large vocabulary, giving your family a large biblical vocabulary is even more important.

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That's why we're going to start today to discuss the four different kinds of biblical love.

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According to ancient Greek speakers, there were four major categories of love. Of those four, three of them made it into the

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New Testament. Of those three, two of them are mentioned and illustrated numerous times, but only one is repeatedly and aggressively commanded over and over again.

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So if there are only three loves mentioned in the Bible, why are we going to talk about the fourth Greek understanding of love?

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And that's a great question. Here's why. Even though only three of the Greek words for love show up in the

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New Testament, it's the fourth Greek word, the one that's not in the Bible, that our world has come to accept as the generally accepted understanding of love.

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That is, of course, the reason why I refer to this love as a fake love. You'll understand better as we tear this word apart.

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But first, let's take a little bit of time to try to figure out what the world thinks when it uses the word love. Well, number one, a popular definition is that love refers to romance, sexuality, and attraction.

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Now, even though many of these same people who believe that love primarily refers to sexuality and attraction realize that love doesn't always include romance, try

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Googling the word and then click on images and see what types of pictures flood your screen. Better yet, don't do that.

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The vast, vast majority are romance and sexually related. Number two, another very common idea is that love is equal to tolerance.

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Quote -unquote, love is expected to accept a person the way they are with no expectation for change.

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Now, this type of love will never disagree with you or say that you're doing something wrong. No doubt, some of you have experienced someone accusing you of not loving them simply because you disagree with their life choices.

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Well, that's not the case, but that's what the world thinks. And number three, lastly, the word love is often used to communicate mere enjoyment or liking.

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For example, on the last episode, I said, I love pizza, but what does that really mean? Well, I suppose it means more like I like eating pizza.

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Maybe it means I'm passionate about pizza. Who knows? I don't know. Well, Google thinks they know, and if you

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Google what is love, the first site to pop up is theanatomyoflove .com. And the anatomyoflove .com

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offers this extended explanation, which I'm going to read for you. However, I'm going to change a few words, assuming we have a younger audience listening in today.

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Quote, love is involuntary. Brain science tells us that it's a drive like thirst.

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It's a craving for a specific person. It's normal, natural to quote -unquote, lose control in the early stage of romance.

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Love like thirst will make you do strange things, but knowledge is power. It's a natural addiction, and treating it like an addiction can help you.

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We were built to fall in love. And they continue. The ancient Greeks called love the madness of the gods.

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Modern psychologists define it as the strong desire for emotional union with another person. But what actually is love?

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It means so many different things to different people. Songwriters have described it. Whenever you're near, I hear a symphony. Shakespeare said love is blind and lovers cannot see.

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Aristotle said love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. But we think that romance is one of three basic brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction.

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And then they delineate the three systems. The first is the drive to reproduce or lust.

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They call it the craving for gratification. And they say that it evolved to enable you to seek a range of potential mating partners.

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After all, you can have relationships with someone you aren't in love with. You can even feel the drive when you're driving in a car or reading a magazine or watching a movie.

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Lust is not necessarily focused on a particular individual, they say. Their second is romantic love or attraction, the obsessive thinking about and craving for a particular person.

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And they say that this evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time.

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As Kabir, the Indian poet, put it, the lane of love is narrow. There is room for only one.

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And then their final proposed brain system is attachment, the feeling of deep union with a long -term partner.

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And they say that this love evolved to enable you to remain with a mate at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy together as a team.

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Although many of us remain together much longer and enjoy the benefits of a life with a partner even when there is no goal to have children, these three brain systems and feelings interact with the, in many ways, to create our myriad forms of loving."

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And yes, wow, that was painful. And I don't say that to be unkind,

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I say it because sin just hurts. That definition of love is nowhere to be found in Scripture. In fact, it contradicts nearly everything the

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Bible actually reveals about love. So why did I take the time to read that extended quote?

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I read it because we have to be confronted by three important truths. Number one, the world has no idea what it's talking about because they're making it up as they go along.

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I mean, they're talking about stuff having evolved, and I guess if you believe in evolution then love has to kind of make sense within an evolutionary context, but they're literally making it up as they go.

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Number two, God knows exactly what He's talking about because He created all of it. And number three, too often our family's understanding of love looks a lot more like the world's delusion than it does

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God's truth. And I hope that you recognize that as you were, as I was going through that list of that definition, quote unquote, of love, that you were thinking to yourself, yeah,

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I've thought those things in the past, or yes, I have family members who think things very similar to that. But even though their definition of love is biblically inaccurate, it aligns perfectly with the fake family love we're discussing today.

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All right, so the Greek word in question is eros, and you don't have to be a Greek scholar to realize that this word is the root of our

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English word erotic. And that's exactly what kind of love this is said to be. Eros is considered a love of passion, an over -mastering passion that seizes and absorbs itself into the mind.

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It's a love that requires an emotional involvement based on body chemistry. Now, many people may say, well, that's not so bad as long as we're talking about eros within a

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Christ -honoring marriage. But unfortunately, that's not an accurate understanding of the Greek word, nor of the biblical view of love.

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First, keep in mind that eros is never once mentioned in the Bible. You would think that if it were a good thing to experience between a married couple, then the

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Bible would have talked about it. And many people try to point to passages about passionate love between husband and wife to be an example of eros, even though the word's not used.

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But it's not an example, and here's why. The basic idea of eros love is self -satisfaction.

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Though the feelings may be aroused by another, this fake love actually has self in mind, how

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I feel, what my experience is. We could put it this way. Eros love says,

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I love you because you make me happy. I love you because you do what you do for me.

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I love you because of how you make me feel. And oftentimes when trying to explain how people relate to God, I'll use this illustration with my counselees.

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I'm just going to go ahead and use the female version for sake of clarity and ease. If you're male, just substitute girls for boys.

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Anyway, let's say that there are four guys who are interested in being your boyfriend. The first is extremely clingy and can't stand not having a girlfriend.

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He wants to be your boyfriend only because he hates being alone. The second guy just wants to be your boyfriend because of your money.

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The third guy doesn't really want to be your boyfriend at all, but his parents told him he should. And the fourth guy wants to be your boyfriend for no other reason than the fact that he really likes you.

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It's not because he will get anything out of it. It's just that he thinks that you're a pretty awesome person. Well, you can imagine which boy nearly every girl prefers, and I'm confident that you would make the same choice.

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But then, I warn my counselees that wanting a relationship with God simply to avoid hell, or merely so that you can gain some perceived benefit from being his child, or just because your parents told you it's a good idea, that's eros.

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It's fake love primarily motivated by the benefits you'll receive from the relationship. It doesn't really have anything to do with knowing and serving the other person.

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It's just about what the other person does for you, including how they make you feel. The foundation of eros love is some characteristic in the other person which pleases you, but God calls that idolatry.

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Now I know that as I describe eros, I'm describing the exact type of love that many parents encourage their children to have.

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Too many people tell their kids to find a boyfriend or girlfriend who will make them happy. But that concept is nowhere in Scripture.

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In fact, what makes this fake eros love even worse is that if the characteristic that originally attracted you would cease to exist in the other person, the reason for the love would be gone and you would stop feeling the eros.

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This is why, as a biblical counselor, I encounter so many spouses who say, I just don't love them anymore.

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This translates into, the things about them I liked are gone, or the benefit I received from being married to them is gone.

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But fake love destroys more than just marriages. This is why siblings really like each other one moment, and the next they can't stand each other.

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Eros looks for what it can receive. If eros ever does give anything, it gives only in order to receive.

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And if eros fails to get what it wants or expects, bitterness or resentment develops. Now I understand the difficulty of swallowing what

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I'm placing before you today. So far, I haven't quoted a verse of Scripture or provided you a better definition of love.

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In fact, I haven't even suggested what biblical love looks like, and yet I'm asking you to reject the commonly accepted definition of love in our culture.

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And here's why. Everything we do goes back to our philosophy. Philosophy refers simply to why you do what you do.

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So that makes sense. And we talked about this in great detail in our Mirrors Christianity series when we looked at why your children do what they do.

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In case you're interested, the first part of the series is episode 95, and if you haven't heard it, I strongly encourage you to check it out.

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We also did an episode which helped you determine if there are failure philosophies in your home, and I'll give you a link to that as well in today's description.

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But the failure philosophy behind Eros is that the loving, quote -unquote, depends on being attracted in some way to another person.

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It's a conditional type of love, and anyone, saved or unsaved, can experience this type of lust.

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Again, please know that God does talk about biblical sexuality and the relationship between husbands and wives, but He never mentions

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Eros in the discussion. However, He does command us to have the other types of love for each other.

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And even if Eros were appropriate between husband and wife, outside of marriage, there would be absolutely no room for Eros in any relationship.

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Now I do want to quickly clear the air with the adults in the room without opening a can of worms for the children.

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I am not saying that romance, attraction, and passion are not biblical. They are extremely biblical, necessary in a

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Christ -honoring marriage, and holy when lived out to God's honor and glory. What I am saying is that lust, selfishness, and using someone to get what you want is all ways a sin.

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So parents, do you relate to your kids one way when they're doing what you say and then struggle to love them when they're terrorizing the household?

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Kids, do you love the people who make your life comfortable but hate them if they start to get in your way? Spouses, is your partner there to serve you or are you there to serve them?

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And not because of what you may later get out of it, but simply because it pleases the Lord. Kids, do you still love your parents even when they have to give you consequences?

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The idea that Eros is real love is one of the most devious and destructive beliefs in our homes.

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And here's why it's so dangerous. If I feel Eros for my family members, you know, I really like them and there are times we really get along,

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I might somehow think I'm glorifying God by loving the way I should. But in the end, my interactions with my family are founded on nothing more than selfishness and idolatry, which doesn't please the

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Lord. This doesn't please him at all because it doesn't come from him and it's not how he's commanded us to love.

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Again, as I said before, any unbeliever can experience Eros. In fact, Jesus said the following in Matthew 5, 46 -47,

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If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

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Do not even the Gentiles do the same? These verses come right after Jesus commanded us to love our enemies.

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There is no way that Eros could ever show genuine love for an enemy. That's just not how Eros works.

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Now, there is so much more that could be said about this, but I'm also trying to keep this series positive and I don't really want to focus too much on what love is and I want to focus on what it is.

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I don't really want to dwell on the wrong definitions and bad philosophies. I'd rather spend our whole time staring at the amazing grandeur that is true biblical love.

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So, instead of studying counterfeits, I want to immerse myself in the authentic. But I knew I couldn't do the study justice until I addressed a number of misconceptions in our home, and that's why this episode is so necessary.

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Calling Eros the fake love is accurate, but it's really actually too nice of a title.

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Eros is more in common with biblical hate than it does biblical love. Eros is using someone for the benefit you receive.

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Now, if you know very little about God and the Bible, what I'm saying probably sounds crazy. If you don't believe in God, there's nothing more important for which to live than your own happiness.

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Clearly, it doesn't make sense to love someone who doesn't benefit you. Even helping homeless people only has value as it makes you feel good about yourself for being a good citizen.

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But as followers of Christ, we must not be motivated by selfishness, ever. In Philippians 2 .3,

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God says, That one verse basically rolls up the

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Greek understanding of Eros and tosses it in the trash. James 3 .16 tells us, And that's what

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Eros is. Are there worthless, bad, or wicked things going on in your home? Well, they are not there because of genuine biblical love.

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They're there because Eros didn't get what it wanted. A chapter later,

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James gives us the perfect picture of Eros. I discussed it in great detail in episode 127 about why people are so violent these days, but I'll sum it up here by saying that conflicts and fights arise because we want something and we don't get it.

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God calls that spiritual adultery. It's hate, but it's also known as Eros. So please don't let this fake love, this lust that takes, take any more from your family.

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Reject selfish lust and join us next time as we start studying the beneficial loves God does want us to have.

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And of course, please share this episode with your friends. Eros is tearing families apart all over the world. Let's join together to shine the light and help people see the kind of love that kills and the kind of love that heals.

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As always, I encourage you to check out the episode notes linked in the description. They're not nearly as robust as the last set of notes

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I did, but it should help your family as you learn to truly love each other. And of course, I hope you'll join us next time as we once again open

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God's word to discover how to thrive in life and godliness. The world has no idea what love is, but God, the creator of love,

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God, the one who is love himself has everything our families need to be a haven of true love. To that end, we'll be discussing the natural family love.

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Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting.

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So join us next time as we study God's words, learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry.