By Rick Sibert                                                                                                                                   January 2008  

What is love for?

Does it wash good people ashore,

Does it keep the wolf from the door,

What is love for?…

So begins the title track from a just released new album by one of my favorite singer-songwriters. Oh, and he’s a staunch atheist.

It’s a haunting piece of work by one of the most talented poets on the planet.  I love to listen to him for his creative genius, but then I can’t listen for too long because the cynicism and overarching hopelessness of his words can be overbearing.

And that is indeed what is at the heart of a true atheist – hopelessness.  For all of their bluster and anger and sarcasm, if you peel back the layers all you have left is a void (of hopelessness). 

For someone to write, “what is love for?” saddens me.  For someone who is so fabulously gifted (by God) as a musician and songwriter to then not know where or whom those gifts come from pains me deeply.

There are millions of people who don’t have the forum of a song who are crying out just like him all over the world.  They want to know where the love is.  Maybe they’ve been abused.  Or oppressed.  They might be in abject poverty - or maybe in fabulous wealth.  One thing is for certain, they’ve been hurt somewhere along the line to not be able to find love, and in fact to question it’s very existence.

Even Madalyn Murray O’Hair, as profane an atheist who ever lived and the founder of American Atheists (and the driving force behind the removal of prayer and the Bible from public schools) deep in her heart of hearts knew what was missing in her life.  In her diaries, which were uncovered in 1995, there are six entries - which are startling in their barrenness – that simply read, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”

What is love for?  How would you answer that question?  How would you engage someone who says they’ve investigated the claims about God and have chosen not to believe in Him?

What is love for?  What would you say to someone who says you’d have to turn off your brain to become a Christian?  That being a Christian is anti-intellectual?  That’s it’s just a crutch for the weak?  What would you say to someone who say’s it’s a “dog-eat-dog world, kill or be killed?  Love?!  Please, I don’t have time for love.  I’ve been down that road….”

Do we just hit them with platitudes, or worse yet, with Bible passages?  I know one thing, with regards to this particular songwriter, after listening to him for about twenty years and seeing him in concert and hearing him be interviewed, that would do absolutely nothing.  His view of Christianity and the church (and probably Christians in particular) has been formed in a deep way.  And I must say that we (the church universal) are mostly to blame.  Why?  Because we don’t take the time to just…love someone.  Without judgment.  Without any restraints.  Without any preconceived notions.  Without any preaching.  Without any finger pointing.  Without any predjudices.  Just love them.  Right where they’re at.  Listen to them.  Speak with gentleness and compassion and kindness. Get to know someone!  Show them they are valuable.  For I am convinced (I’ve seen it happen) that once someone starts to feel they are of worth, their whole worldview changes.  The barriers they have constructed around themselves begin to fall away.  They begin to see what love is for….

I heard a wonderful chapel service at Cedarville University the other day.  The speaker was Kelly Monroe, the planning director for the Veritas Forum, an organization that goes to college campuses around the country doing this very thing – engaging the secular students in their own environment with the power of the gospel message in action.

She told about a time when she was called at the last minute to travel to upstate New York to give a talk on “feminism and the Bible.”  She thought it was going to be to a like-minded campus group, but when she got there she found out she was speaking to a room jam packed with an angry mob, filled with the dyed and pierced and tattooed!

She prayed before she went on stage, and inquired, “Lord, what are you planning on doing tonight?”  In the midst of the chaos of rantings and chantings, the Lord spoke to her and told her just to listen to them.  He wanted them to know that He cared about what they were saying and about what they were feeling.  She stood there listening for awhile, and then slowly pulled the blackboard over and said, “Now I can’t hear you all at the same time, would you please direct your concerns to me one at a time so I can write them down and we can talk about them?”  There was stunned silence.  And then the questions came, one after another.  They could have all been summed up with one question, “What is love for?”

Kelly did this for over an hour, just talking and listening.  And at the end of that time, the anger was gone.  Attitudes were changed and seeds were planted.  She had a woman ask her where passages were in the Bible that showed Jesus with women.  One of the socialist campus leaders started going to a Bible study shortly thereafter.  In the end it was a successful night for the Lord and His kingdom of love.

 Quite simply, in answer to our original posit - love is a gift.  True love is only profitable when it is given away.  That’s what the atheists haven’t been able to get a grasp on.  And the greatest example of love was the Son of God coming to earth (the author entering the story, as Kelly Monroe stated) to live among us and to lay down His life so that we might live.  That we might live abundant lives deeply filled and fulfilling (John 10).  That we might know how we are gifted and how we can find meaning and purpose in this life and for eternity.  That’s what love is for.

Editor’s Note:  Eternal Perspective is a monthly feature of Calvary Chapel Columbus and the commentary of Pastor Rick Sibert, focusing on living a Godly life in the midst of an ungodly world.