Peeled: LOVE

Friday, March 4, 2016

Jeff Lampl

“The fruit of the spirit is love . . . .”  Galatians 5:22

The TV show, “The Bachelor”,  is now in its 20^th  . .  .

season.   What’s really interesting is that the first bachelor show took place almost 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.   Here’s an excerpt.

“Now Laban had two daughters. The older daughter was named Leah, and the younger one was Rachel.  There was no sparkle in Leah’s eyes, but Rachel had a beautiful figure and a lovely face.  Since Jacob was in love with Rachel, he told her father, “I’ll work for you for seven years if you’ll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife.”  “Agreed!” Laban replied. “I’d rather give her to you than to anyone else. Stay and work with me.”  So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days.”      Genesis 29:16-20 (NLT)

In this episode the bachelor, Jacob, had only two contestants to choose from (TV programming was still in its primitive stages then and contestants were few and far between), Rachel and Leah.   In the original Hebrew “beautiful figure and lovely face” actually meant “hot”.   So, of course, Jacob goes for Rachel.   He’s a guy, after all, who, driven by his youthful neediness and passions, can’t think clearly when he’s smitten.   But he does come up with one of the greatest “lines” in the Bible, “but his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but it a few days”.  Is that a great line or what?  I tried it on Kathy once.  She just said it seemed like years. 

In the end Jacob gets them both!  (the show still had some kinks to work out).   You might want to check out how well the threesome worked for each of them in rest of chapter 29 and 30.   You’d think we would have learned our lesson by now.   Jacob was a lost soul who was needy and he found a way that he thought would fulfill that need.  Leah, too, tried to fill the hole in her soul too in a different way.  The results for both were exactly what you would expect.

Listen to the words of psychologist Ernest Becker (a secular unbeliever) in his 1970 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death.

“modern people won’t admit it, but . .  .we are making up for the lack of inner spiritual fullness”

“By looking out there saying I’m going to find that one”. 

(I’m here to “find love” say all the bachelors and bachelorettes!)

“we need to feel that our life matters.  We want to merge ourselves into some higher self-absorbing meaning in trust and gratitude, but If we no longer have god how are we to do this?”

“and one of the first ways that occurred to the modern person is the romantic solution.,  the self-glorification that we need in our innermost being (hear that?) we now look for in a love partner” 

“What is it we want when we elevate the love partner to this position?   We want to be rid of our faults we want our rid of our feeling of nothingness want to be justified to know our existence hasn’t been in vain.  We want redemption nothing less”  

Wow!  I’ll explain the rest at 9:30 and 11:00 on Sunday at CLC.