Love is patient…. Love is kind…. Love is changed….. Love is gone….. Love is modern. What is love in today’s world? Is it being swept off your feet? Is it seeing someone's soul over their looks? Is it doing something you hate that your partner loves? Do we even know? A generation or two ago we would have said yes to these questions, but in today’s world that has been changed. Modern love is not love. It has been changed to a desire for sex, power, and sin. Modern love is the devil wreaking havoc in our lives.
To start off Love is a term that is easily defined as an intense feeling of deep affection according to webster's dictionary. Love in and of itself is a very unsolidified concept it is a feeling and a word that describes something that just is not tangible and frankly can never be considered tangible. Love is when you buy someone a banana because you know it is their favorite fruit. Love is when you think someone is beautiful even when they are sick and in sweatpants. Love is an intense feeling of happiness and just wanting to be together. Some say that love is lust and was built by the devil where God differs, God actually fully defines love for us in the bible “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) This shows us that love is not the devil's work and is more than anything tangible. Love is strong enough to make a person want to be perfect just to love and the Lord even gives us a guide of how to do this.
There is also the idea of modern that needs to be addressed. Modern is defined in the dictionary as relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past. This definition is quite broad and literally means anything that happens today is modern. Gay marriage is modern, fights are modern, facebook is modern today's views on love are modern. Modern just means that in today's society it is understood and accepted by most because it is just what is done in this generation. Modern can also just stand for anything that we have begun to accept as the norm that was not considered the norm before now, to simplify it even further. The word modern is much more tangible than love, but just as impactful.
Looking back at the ideas of modern and love they have very solid definitions. These solid definitions in the end help solve the mystery of how to truly define and break apart modern love. Modern love in its simplest is defined as sex, power, and sin. None of these things are good and none of them actually pertain to the word love, but pertain more so to the word modern. Modern love also has many other problems such as bringing issues with marriages due to money and drugs, there is also a higher teen pregnancy rate and divorce rate. It also ruins the idea of what love is really about.
Sadly the information above also known as modern love is the most accepted thing wholly by millennials before even gay rights or feminism. The idea that lusting over someone means that you love them has begun to sweep the nation and that has made the idea of modern love a very accepted ideal. Many millennials even openly and proudly state that they are in open relationships because being in love with more than one guy is better than being in love with just the one. Millennials are excited and openly profess to using guys for sex, money, drugs, power, and who knows how many other sins if we kept questioning them.
Looking at all this we realize this idea of modern love is affecting teens and adults alike. Teen pregnancy is on the rise and more adultury than ever is being committed and all due to the ideals stated above. Before Adultery could have been related to a bad heart, but nowadays it is the norm for a guy to have a “side chick” or a women to cheat over getting money or drugs. The further we normalize this the further gone the idea of actual love stays and the more the ideal that cheating, sex, and loose relationships are the whole point of it all.
With the idea that modern love is a good thing seeping from most millennials it is important to discuss why that is wrong. Not only with personal opinion, but with fact. The fact is that modern love kills the factor of love where you fall for someone's true inner beauty and instead are using the factor of outside beauty and money. On top of the fact that we as a society are starting to accept sin as stated in above paragraphs there are even some scary statistics on the rise. 88% of women actually find money to be the most important factor in a relationship which leads to money being the number one argument between couples. Divorces top reasons even consist of cheating, lack of sex life, and money. Another thing to consider with modern love is the statistics that come with premarital sex and living together to “test it out.” This process has left 70% of adults in Washington DC. unmarried. As these statistics rise we see more and more of how bad modern love can be to everyone. Millennials are growing up that this is the ideal relationship and soon it will be what is under the term relationship goals.
In today’s world it is easy to get whisked away in the ideals of the people around us. This is the reason modern love is so ignored and so easily accepted even with the statistics to prove it is causing people to suffer. The idea that the bible has no hold and that we can all just do what our hearts desires is more appealing to millennials. Even the idea that we should “follow our hearts” is an idea that grows the idea of modern love and pushes the boundaries God has set for the all of mankind. The Lord says that our hearts are evil and that they are not to be trusted and yet we are guilty of even teaching our children that that is how we should life which can even fester modern love further into the religious side of the societal spectrum.
With the ideas that have just been given in mind it’s sad to see that many people would say that the way modern love is defined above is not modern love, but “how old rich white republicans define modern love” as stated by more than five people my age on facebook. One saying “I just read an article that says modern love is the work of the devil and that it is full of sin. It’s too bad that these crazy old white republicans truly believe that. Modern love is true love.” (Person A at 12:15 on 8/18/16) They have this idea that there is nothing wrong with the way people want to love that they should be allowed to be free spirits with no consequences. They believe that it is truly normal to hop from guy to guy or to use a guy for immorale things. They make the argument that we as human beings decide what is right or wrong and that in this day and age teen pregnancy and premarital sex for any reason is the norm. The question is are they just developing what we as a society consider the norm to the point that it will be even harder to establish if love and modern love are even two separate words?
All in all mankind and society as a whole has torn the love word to shreds and replaced it with the devils work. The devil is stepping into our lives and feeding us sex, money, and power, and we are eating it like the dumb mouse that eats cheese of a trap. The devil has trapped us in a never ending cycle of heartbreak and confusion and as a society we are letting him because modern love has given us just enough power over our lives for us to forget how helpless and lost we are without God even in finding a life partner.
