Yet many well-meaning Christians have failed to grasp how the postmodern ethos has infected (to the point of destruction) their own understanding of Christ’s command to “Love your neighbor.” In our hyper-subjective age, this command is emptied of all objective content. The result is that some cannot even conceive of a situation in which a Christian could fulfill this command in such a way that a neighbor who is loved according to God’s standards might not feel loved according to his own.
We’re Commanded to Love Our Neighbors, Not to Make Them Feel Loved
A warning I give to so many Christians is to mind definitions. We say one thing and say it from the foundational truths of Scripture— and thus the foundational truths of all Creation— and the world says the same exact thing but means something in complete contradiction. If you haven’t seen the effects yet, give it another year or two.
Words must have meaning. If God sets the definition, that is the definition.
All who think this way have fallen for the poisonous lie that hurt feelings, per se, are sufficient proof that you have failed to love your neighbor. Yet if that is so, we make Christ himself out to be a sinner! […] Indeed, Jesus was not murdered because he was too nice but because he did and said things that caused some to despise him—yet in all this he was “without sin” (Heb. 4:15 ; cf. 1 Pet. 2:22 ; 1 John 3:5).
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Even so, the idea that we are commanded to make our neighbor “feel loved” is ultimately a form of relativism in Christian drag, a kind of sentimentality that holds to the form of godliness—“love your neighbor!”—while denying its true power.
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If feelings are the standard, then there is no standard. There also are no constraining limits. For if making someone “feel loved” is the requirement for being loving, there is no end to what darkened hearts may demand in order to feel sufficiently loved. This is, of course, precisely what is happening everywhere in the West.
If I do not feel loved, you are not loving your neighbor. Let’s put this differently, if you don’t use my pronouns, you are being hateful and bigoted. If you don’t support marriage between these two people, it’s because you hate them. If you don’t let me teach your kids about sex and gender, you hate me.
These are lies to manipulate Christians that are not ready for the bait and switch on the word “love”. It’s a powerful play, really.
They have turned Christ’s command to love our neighbors—along with the many biblical commands to be compassionate and kind—into a blank check for the world to cash.
Christian, you say you love your neighbor? Well to love me you must do jumping jacks for three hours straight. Anything else is abject hatred. It’s one thing when the request is that we work out, but when they ask you to lie or bear false witness? To worship their idols instead of Christ? Love is not theirs to define.
Am I seeking the approval of my neighbor or of God? For if I were still trying to please my neighbor, I would not be a servant of Christ (cf. Gal. 1:10).