Learning to Love

CHAPTER 2 
Natural Affection 

What we in our natural unregenerate state call love, and I have called instead in the previous chapter natural affection, is fundamental in multiple ways in all of human Society. The area in which it normally dominates our human relationships is the family. And though we tend to regard families as the most stable units in secular society, upon closer scrutiny we find equally in godly Christian families and in those never sanctified in holy matrimony stability and harmony are extremely rare. Indeed there is a special kind of natural affection that ties family members somewhat together even in times of strife and conflict. But, on the other hand some of the most violent and dangerous hatreds can and do arise within family units, not only family against family, but spouse against spouse, sibling against sibling, Parent against child or child against parent, but generation against generation and other configurations of filial combat. 
Nevertheless, what we see most commonly in perhaps a majority of families is at least a moderate degree of natural affection between family members strong enough to hold them together in times of trouble. Where there is considerably obvious strife between family members most families attempt to deny it and cover it up to maintain the family image seen by the public, the family pride. Even in the most orderly and well-functioning families their individual members cling to and hide under a veneer of respectability that masquerades as love. Families range in their natural affection for each other from the most loving to the utterly dysfunctional even with no trace of any natural affection. But in no family devoid of any relationship with God can anything resembling the love of God be found, and no veneer of respectability can cover up that lack. In the beginning God created the family and ordained how it should function 
Genesis 2:24 
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 
It is obvious that there is something obscure about that scripture, because only a very few have an idea what it means. And there is a clear reason why that is so. The reason is that it is holy scripture, the Word of God, that cannot be understood by the natural man in the flesh, but must be revealed to the new born spiritual creature in Christ whose divine love calls every man to repentance by opening his spiritual eyes and ears to perceive. Whenever God’s word seems to be obscure or difficult, no man’s effort will ever figure it out. But God did not put it there to remain enigmatic or obscure. But in His unconditional love for you He wants you to seek and find Him. If the scriptures were merely an instruction manual filled with instructions for man to follow to make it all work as material things do, there would be nothing that man couldn’t do for himself. But the complete opposite is true. There is nothing spiritual that man can do for himself and nothing material either over which he has any power, though the world, the flesh and the devil would have him think so. 
None of this means to acuse any natural faithless person or any believer of insincerity or deliberate callousness. Our natural reactions to tragedy and great losses are not only sincere and deeply felt whether we believe or not. The only difference for blievers is that we have within us the comfort and consolation to know that we will always retain the memory and the blessing of its final outcome; whereas the unbeliever will only be able to repress its memory never finding rhyme nor reason for it, only bitterness corrosive to his soul. 
Though we think that we can follow to the letter the rules and laws of society in order to succeed and prosper, upon closer examination we find that all that we achieve in our own strength can crumble to dust just as our flesh is in the process of doing from the moment of our birth. We love our parents. We love our children. We love our spouses. We love certain other relatives and find close friends whom we love, and have perhaps a few colleagues at work whom we love, but there is not one of those love relationships, each of a different kind, that is unassailable by circumstances. Many of us base our entire lives upon a foundation and structure of such love relationships. There is no constancy in any of them that can ever be more than natural affection unless they are transformed by the Holy Spirit of God into divine love. The way to make that transformation is available and accessible through faith in Jesus Christ, but it must be relentlessly pursued as long as our mortal flesh has not yet expired. We have only until then to pursue it. 
Heartbreak is all too often the only reward that passionate lovers take away from their natural affection for each other that both swore to be eternal love. God is omnisciently aware of the grief that people can encounter in lovers’ quarrels, breakups and divorces, but He is never the cause of such suffering. He, quite the contrary, is the only one who can sanctify, transform and restore the shattered emotions either to save one from a disastrous choice or to restore a union made in heaven. Our natural affection toward anyone or anything only has the power to find in our affection an interest and concern not for the object of that affection but ultimately only for ourselves. Even our grief at the death of a loved one is grief for our loss rather than for the deceased. We can and should grieve for any who have died without knowing the Son of God and for our loss as well, but we can celebrate and rejoice at the passing of all those whom we know to be believers. We know that they are in heaven, and that we shall see them joyfully again in eternity there.