We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
This is the first week of Advent, the season where we anticipate the coming of Christ. It’s a time to hear and enter into the story of how Jesus came out of love to give his life for us. This grand love story of Christmas taps into a deep intuition we have about the centrality of love. We possess an inexplicable knowledge that if life has any meaning, it must have something to do with love. One could argue that all of our intuitions about morality and the meaning of life are at root an intuition about the supremacy of love.
Of course, many of us today embrace a worldview that makes it difficult to make sense of this profound intuition. Many, for example, believe that only physical matter is real and that there is, therefore, no objective reality to moral convictions and no overarching purpose to life. Still, if we are at all emotionally and psychologically healthy, we will live like morality does objectively exist and as if there is a purpose to life, and this purpose has something to do with love. The dream of love reigning supreme is not easily extinguished.
This enduring dream of love has been expressed in stories told by various cultures throughout time. While most love stories are between humans (for example, Helen of Troy and Paris or Romeo and Juliet), some are between gods (for example, Ariadne and Dionysus) and some even between a god and a human (for example, Aphrodite and Adonis). Today, we don’t see many stories of love involving gods, but we do see extravagant love stories between people. Just consider the incredible popularity of the books and movies by Nicholas Sparks. Or the fact that during the Christmas season, there are some television channels that only run Christmas movies, and so many of them are love stories. The popularity of love stories might have something to do with the ways they connect us with a primordial dream.
It’s the dream of love that lies at the heart of every human being.
If the depth of one’s love can be measured by the sacrifice one is willing to make for the beloved, then the Jesus story must be judged as not only the greatest love story ever told, but also the greatest love story that ever could be told. It is the story of the all-powerful Creator God making the greatest conceivable sacrifice for people who didn’t deserve—or even desire—it. No story could be imagined in which a lover sacrificed more for a beloved who deserved it less.
In this sense, the Jesus story climaxes and fulfills the dream of all the greatest legendary love stories. J. R. R. Tolkien said that the story of Jesus has a “peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving” quality to it that is “mythical” in its perfection. All other love stories are approximations of this one.
Photo credit: Martin Beek via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC
Related Reading
Why Didn’t Jesus Denounce Military Service?
A common objection to the claim that Jesus and the authors of the New Testament were opposed to all forms of violence is that neither Jesus nor anyone else speaks out against it. When soldiers asked John the Baptist what they should do in response to his message, for example, he told them not to…
Possibility of Love
In this video, Greg explores the core sin that stands in the way of love. You might be surprised by what it is. Video by The Work of the People
Jesus and those “Other People”
Adele Booysen via Compfight Nicky Marshall is the husband of one wife (Raquel), father or two boys (Nathan and Elijah) and serves as assistant pastor at The Living Room Church in Barbados. Nicky is also an Artist and Surfer. He blogs here. “This is Ferozah”. I instinctively stuck my hand out to greet a smiling Muslim…
Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 4
This is the fourth of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? We hope you’re enjoying these! They really provide a great overall approach to Biblical Criticism. If you missed the first three installments you can find them here, here and here.
Video Q&A: Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?
Greg discusses the origins of our celebration of Christmas and whether Christians should celebrate it given its pagan origins. Plus, he gives us some interesting new lyrics to the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Have fun!
Did the Father Suffer on the Cross?
When I argue that the cross is a Trinitarian event (See post), some may suspect that I am espousing Patripassionism, which was a second and third century teaching that held that God the Father suffered on the cross. While this view was often expressed as a form of heretical Modalism, and while the Patristic fathers…