Selective Relativism: Love Isn't Acceptance or Toleration

In 2011 I attended incognito the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Francisco, and listened to Robert P. George in a session entitled, "Ethics in an Age of Relativism."  He described students in general in today's colleges and universities as selectively relativistic.  They become very absolute usually only when they judge a personal offense.  They know you've offended them.

As an example, love has an objective meaning that proceeds from scripture.  It doesn't mean acceptance or toleration, yet that's the definition most accept today.  "Love is acceptance" gets 115,000 results when you google it.  Many call this "unconditional love" (21 million results) about which someone wrote:

The practical extension of the theories of unconditional love is a permissive attitude and a morally nonrestrictive atmosphere.

I've read several say that millennials don't want to be judged.  They don't want to be preached to or told what to do.  A fifth of Americans claim to be religiously unaffiliated, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, which categorizes them as “nones.”  Millennials are less devout than any other age bracket polled and describe Christianity as “hypocritical” and “judgmental.”  Both those words are common for millennials.

Hypocrisy of any kind is ironic for someone who doesn't want to be judged, doesn't want you to be judgmental.  Hypocrisy requires a standard.  No one can be a hypocrite when there is no standard, unless he is selective.  They apply hypocrisy to you because you have a standard.  They then feel entitled to have no standard because you have violated your own, meaning that it doesn't matter to keep it.  They have a standard of which they are only sure when they are offended.

Judgment is an important aspect of actual Christianity, so this is where selective relativism enters.  They want to be accepted based on who they want to be and what they want to do without judgment.  That is the new love.  They can't be "authentic" if they can't live exactly how they feel without recrimination.  This isn't love.

Love as we know it today originated from the Bible.  As it began to be used in English discourse after the translation of the Bible into English, love took on a biblical meaning, because that's where the idea came from.  It maintained biblical parameters, until words started taking on new meanings to adapt to the inclinations or views of the reader.  Usage of the word "love" then changed.

A millennial might tell you that you don't love him, but he doesn't mean biblical love when he says love.  Today fellow millennials know what the other means.  When he says you don't love him, he means you are judging him and you aren't accepting or tolerating his behavior.  This is the "unconditional love."  In fact, if you do love him, actually love him, you can't tolerate or accept all of his behavior.

Love that proceeds from scripture, the only actual love, is of God, like John wrote in 1 John 4:7, "love is of God," which is one of the first verses we had our children learn.  Love is an attribute of God.  He defines love, which is why John also wrote, "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 18).  If something clashes with God, it can't be love.

Love assumes standards, because something that violates the standards of God is not love.  The ten commandments, which are standards, are reduced in the Old and New Testaments to two standards, love God and love your neighbor.  You aren't loving God when you disobey and dishonor Him, and you aren't loving your neighbor when you are disobeying and dishonoring God.  God explains what it is to love your neighbor.

In the love chapter, Paul writes that "love rejoiceth not in iniquity" (1 Corinthians 13:6).  Consider these two verses:

Proverbs 3:12, "For whom the LORD loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth."
Hebrews 12:6, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."

Those two verses are a millennial nightmare.  They clash with unconditional love as much as possible.  They would read instead, For whom the Lord loveth, he accepteth. In Ephesians 5:26, using the Lord's love for the church as an example of how a husband loves his wife, the Apostle Paul says that Christ loves and gives himself to the church

that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

So loving is sanctifying and cleansing using the Word of God.  Sanctifying is separating and cleansing is removing dirt or corruption.

Of course, love includes encouragement, time spent, cheerful words, thanks, and gifts.  When there is wrong behavior, that violates God's standard, love brings correction, reproof, chastening, cleansing, and sanctifying.  Love is of God and God is love.

A millennial may want the love that he wants, acceptance and toleration, which he deems to be love out of his selective relativism.  When you violate that standard, his requirement to accept and tolerate, he will judge it not to be love.  He's judging too, just based on selective relativism.

Scripture requires love of God and others.  Paul said, cursed is any man who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 16:22.  If you are messed up on love, because of selective relativism, you are cursed.