Strong Love

Albert Einstein's greatest breakthrough, the plains of Moab, and two men on the opposite sides of history.

Strong love is a relative thing.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

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Transcript

In 1905 and 1915, Albert Einstein proposed and published two inter-related theories, special relativity in 1905 and the theory of general relativity in 1915.  These two theories eventually would become central to almost every area of physics and astronomy.  If you have ever studied science, it is likely that Einstein’s name has come up.  Big hair, eccentric genius – Einstein IS the stereotype that all other geek stereotypes are built off of.  Everyone knows Einstein, but a lot less people understand what he was talking about.  Why was relativity such a giant breakthrough?

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is that things which everyone else thought were separate things – space, gravity, light, even the passage of time were all actually connected.  Each of these seemingly individual areas of the natural world were all relative to each other.  Gravity is dependent upon mass for instance – the larger something is, the more gravitational pull it has because mass has a way of bending space, and when space is bent, it has a way of bending light, too.  Everything is related to everything else and that means things like speed are all relative.  If I’m sitting in my car, it feels like I’m sitting still, but to the guy at the crosswalk, I’m driving 35 miles per hour… and to the spaceship watching the earth hurtle around the sun – all of us are traveling 67,000 miles per hour.  If you ask how fast something is – the reference point matters.

Today, we are talking about strong love, and those two words ‘strong’ and love’ are relative words.  They only have meaning in reference to something else.  If I say something is strong – I need to know in what way it is strong.  An Olympic weightlifter is strong in reference to physical strength, but an eighty-year-old woman may be strong because she has experienced loss, trials, and heartache throughout her life and has managed to grieve and heal while maintaining a positive outlook on life.  Emotional strength is wildly different from physical strength, but both are strength.  The point of reference matters.  Are we talking about emotions or muscle?  And there is strength in a lot of other areas, too.  Sometimes strength looks like refusing to budge – you may have the moral strength to hold to your convictions – like a whistleblower exposes corruption or Moses refuses to compromise with Pharaoh.  Sometimes, it is strength to show grace and back down – offering forgiveness to someone that has hurt you or embracing people with their flaws or building a relationship with someone by having the strength to be vulnerable.  Again – strength is relative and it requires a point of reference.

Love is also a relative word – it requires a point of reference – or more specifically love requires an object of reference.  What do you love?  An environmentalist may passionately love nature and spend all their time and energy advocating for its preservation.  A chef pours their heart and soul into creating delicious and beautiful dishes because they love food.  Or a globetrotter spends every last vacation day and dollar seeking new experiences and diverse destinations because they love travel.  Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  Love requires something to BE LOVED.  And to add to this – loving something typically requires hating other things.

I can’t love truth without hating lies.   A chef that loves good food will also despise a bad meal.  If we love our families, we also hate anything that would harm them.  The same mother that snuggles her babies will also fight off an attacker without any moral compulsion.  Beware the mother bear who feels her cubs are threatened.

Jesus addresses this principle of love’s relation to hate when He says in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.”  Love requires a jealousy to it – a specific loyalty to that object or person that supersedes all others.  The stronger the love, the stronger the influence it has on our decision making.

So, as we talk about strong love – we have two relative things that require points of reference… and that means strong love can go really well or really wrong.  It’s all relative.  And to illustrate that, we’ve got to look at the nation of Moab and two men with different points of view.

Nestled along the northeastern edge of the Dead Sea, opposite the city of Jericho lie the plains of Moab.  The plains are a dry, flat stretch of desert that without irrigation would be quite barren.  Summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, only 3 to 8 inches of rain a year, most of that concentrated in the winter months, and to add to that the plains of Moab endure regular visits from the shamal – strong winds from the north that carry sand and dust, reducing visibility.  In short, the plains of Moab were no great shakes in a pre-industrialized world… yet, Numbers 22 places these plains as the last station of the Israelite exodus.  And it is here, in these dusty desert plains that two men show us how strong their love is.  Pitted on opposite sides of history, Balaam and Phinehas stand as reminders that strong love can cause you to do some of the craziest things imaginable.

Let’s look at Balaam first.  Throughout history, Balaam will be referenced over and over again as the archetype of loving the wrong things.  Balaam had a strong love of money.  Three New Testament writers, Peter, Jude, and John in the book of Revelation will reference Balaam as a man of greed who made the error of loving the wrong things.  Balaam, the man that loved the wages of unrighteousness.  If all you did was read the New Testament, you would think Balaam was a one-dimensional bad guy, twirling his villain mustache while plotting the demise of the Israelites camped in the plains of Moab… but the Old Testament tells a more complicated story.

The only reason Balaam shows up in the book of Numbers is because he is a famous prophet and a man of God.  The Moabites, who fear the Israelite hordes who are camped just outside in their backyard are looking for any tool to protect themselves from this invading nation that is rolling across the countryside winning every battle against every enemy. When Balak, the king of Moab calls for Balaam to curse Israel, he does so because Balaam has a reputation for accuracy in regards to prophecy.  As Numbers 22:6 says, “he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”  Furthermore, Balaam initially shows a great deal of integrity when being wooed by the Moabites to betray God’s chosen nation.  Balaam’s answer to their request to curse the Jews is, “Spend the night here, and I will bring word back to you as the LORD may speak to me.”  Balaam shows clear signs of character and love for God… but remember how we said strong love is relative?  Balaam does love God, but his love for money is stronger.  When it comes down to God and money – Balaam has a financial master.

Which is what makes Balaam’s story so wild.  At every turn of the story in  Numbers 22 through Numbers 25, Balaam makes it clear that he knows the right thing to do.  God’s answer is that he cannot curse Israel because God is going to bless them.  God tells Balaam to not go with the Moabites and to not accept their generous offers to honor him richly and fill his home with silver and gold.  Balaam states over and over again, “Whatever the Lord speaks, that I must do”  Balaam says all the proper things, but his actions are like watching another man entirely.  

Balaam speaks the words of a prophet, but lives the life of a man with money as his master.  He goes to Moab against God’s orders, he is more stubborn than a donkey in his efforts to get to where the riches and the honor lie, he attempts, three times to curse Israel even when the only words that can come out of his mouth are blessings, and after all of that, we get the end of the matter recorded in Revelation 2:14.

“The teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.”

Balaam couldn’t curse Israel, but he still wanted the money – so what does he do?  He teaches the Moabites to trick Israel into idolatry.  Get the Israelites to sin and God will punish them.  It is the most treasonous act in all the history of the Exodus.  The Israelites are right at the end of their journey to the Promised Land and one of God’s own prophets decides to give the enemy the keys to defeat them.    Israel does play the harlot with the Moabites, sacrificing to false gods, eating and pagan feasts, and the men of Israel join themselves to the daughters of Moab in idolatrous sin.  God had to punish Israel for their sin, and 24,000 people died in a plague because of Balaam’s advice to Moab.  How strong was Balaam’s love of money – 24,000 lives strong.  Balaam loves his master, and like a moth to the flame, the shiny glitter of money drives him right into the arms of evil.  Strong love leads to strange choices – sometimes irrational choices.  If you love the wrong things, you may just find yourself being strongly overcome by strong urges to do seriously stupid things, and then when it destroys your life and others you will be left wondering, “What was I thinking?”

As I said, 24,000 people died because of Balaam… but it could have been worse, so much worse, if it weren’t for another man’s strong love… because the strong love of Phinehas is a textbook case of how the right love can be a strong influence for good.

Phinehas is the only person in recorded history to be described as “having the jealousy of God”.  Numbers 25 sets the stage – thousands dead, the impact of Balaam’s trickery has worked great evil.  Families ravaged by the pandemic gather around at the center of the camp, weeping, praying, and asking God to heal them, and in the midst of all this sadness and loss the most audacious thing happens.  A man brings a Moabite woman through the crowds back to his tent.  The very sin that led to the plague they are all weeping over is being flaunted before everyone… but there is a problem.  The man’s name is Zimri, and he is from a prominent tribal family.  This is an upper class man.  He has influence and power.  Obviously, he’s got a lot of confidence to be so bold.  You can almost envision him walking through the camp, word spreads of the sin, but nobody does anything – they just talk because corruption in leadership… whatcha gonna do? Right?

Wrong.  Let me read for you, word for word what Phinehas does.

“When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced them through, the man of Israel an the woman, through the body.  So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked.”

         Phinehas stopped the plague because Phinehas loved God enough, and he loved his countrymen enough, to strongly act.  His strong love let to strong jealousy.  And Phinehas is a priest, this is no warrior class individual.  He isn’t a soldier.  He is the guy people go to be cleansed, the one to help with their problems, the one to advocate for their forgiveness.  Priests stood for peace, not war – but strong love leads to strong action.

         Phinehas is the anti-Balaam.  Balaam knew the right thing to do and still found his feet wandering after the wrong master. Everyone would have expected Phinehas to freeze, but he stood up when no one else did.  Phinehas and Balaam both loved, and they loved strongly enough to have their lives be changed by the consequences of that love… but strong love is a relative thing.  It’s only good from the right point of reference.

         We talk a lot about learning to love better on this podcast, but maybe we should clarify that statement – we want to love better things better.  The object of your love, especially the object of your strongest love will set the course of your life.

         It isn’t enough to have strong love.  Love better – put your strength into loving better things.

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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”