For a brief period of time after college I worked in a coffee store. The store not only sold coffee, espresso and cappuccino but all kinds of coffee beans as well. One of the perks of working there, pun intended, is that we could drink as much coffee as we wanted as long as we brought in our own coffee mug. Since I love coffee, I took my mug in and drank a lot of coffee. We could also take home ground coffee that didn’t sell as well as samples of the coffee we sold so again, since I love coffee, I took coffee home to drink at night. I was drinking coffee just about all day, every day.
The caffeine never bothered me and I slept great, but then one night I think that the caffeine from all the coffee I drank for a month hit my system and my heart started beating really fast. I could feel my body moving as my heart beat. My brain couldn’t stop and I was up and down about every 5 minutes. My heart was racing fast and I couldn’t stop moving and thinking and shaking.
The next day I decided that maybe I needed to cut back on the amount of coffee I was drinking and I began to understand the truth of the saying, too much of a good thing can kill you. In 2019, there was a Massachusetts man who loved black licorice so much that he ate a bag every day. Three weeks later he died of a heart attack. His death was caused by the glycyrrhizin found in the black licorice which can cause low potassium levels and heart arrhythmia. Once again, too much of a good thing literally killed him.
While his death was a very unusual circumstance, we know that too much of anything we might love to eat or drink can be dangerous. Too much alcohol can cause liver damage. Too much sugar can cause diabetes. Too much saturated and trans fats can lead to high cholesterol. Even too much water can cause kidney damage. Too much love for a good thing can be a bad thing. So let me ask you to reflect on what you love the most.
My hope is that the first thing that came to your mind was a person or family, but what is it you love the most?
Who are the people you love the most?
What are the experiences you love the most?
What are the things you love the most?
My guess is that the people you love the most might include your spouse or your children. For many people, the real love comes when they are a grandparent because that is a special kind of love. The people you love most might include a best friend or maye you included yourself on the list. It’s important for us to love ourselves, not in prideful and narcissistic ways where we put ourselves first in all things, but we have to see ourselves as loved and valued in order to really know how to love others. We need to remember that I Am Loved (pin) so it’s ok to say that one of the people I love is myself.
The experiences you love the most might be time spent at the beach or in the mountains. For years I loved hiking and spent 2 weeks every year in the smoky mountains. It’s not that I don’t love that anymore, but I then started vacationing at the beach and realized that I really love the beach as well. Maybe you love playing sports, riding bikes, hunting or fishing or more extreme adventures like skydiving or zip lines or car racing.
And then the things we love can be broad. Many here love Penn State Wrestling. I love Duke basketball and maybe the best thing is eating kettle cooked potato chips while watching Duke basketball. There are many things we love from food to sports to music to books to movies to games.
All of these things we love are good, but they need to have their proper place. My hope is that you love your family more than sports and maybe experiences like hiking or vacations more than potato chips and ice cream. If we were to look at the things we love like a pyramid, we need to have the foundational things we love at the bottom and secondary things at top. (Pyramid picture)
The base of the pyramid should be our love for God and understanding God’s love for us. We were created in the image of God to be loved by God and to love God in return. This is the love and relationship that needs to be the rock on which everything else, and every other love, is built. On this love we build our love for family and then a love for others, our friends and neighbors, and then we might talk about love for experiences and the things we love to do and eat.
When our love is ordered this way, life is healthy and good, but when love is not ordered, when we try and make the foundation things that were never meant to be the foundation, it’s like trying to keep an upside down pyramid stable and strong. Misordered love in our lives can lead to disaster.
St. Augustine, one of the early theologians of the church, talked about the importance of an orderly love, or a love that starts with God and then moves to family, self, others and then the things of the world. Augustine knew the importance of this because his early life was very disordered. David Naugle, one of the premier scholars on Augustine, said this about his life.
He grew up in a dysfunctional family, suffered through a childhood of unhappiness, was prone to theft and dishonesty, abhorred study and formal education, was virtually addicted to sex and food, enjoyed the life of the theatre, studied off-beat philosophies and religions, and for a time was a single parent. His life was unquestionably disordered, and like many of our contemporaries, he found himself on a relentless course in search of healing and happiness.
When our love is misordered, we aren’t content, we are always searching for something more, and never happy. While my early life didn’t reflect the depth of disorder that Augustine’s did, it was disordered. I went to college thinking I wanted to work at resorts because I wanted to live in beautiful and comfortable places around the world. I wasn’t thinking about the work of hospitality and business, I was thinking about how nice it would be to live in Bermuda. I was hoping to make a lot of money and be comfortable.
Another priority I had when I got to MSU was to transform myself into some kind of party guy so I could experience a life that I didn’t have in High School. My priorities and what I thought I would love were disordered and the more I tried to make it happen, the worse it got. I was unstable, unhappy, burning through relationships and isolating myself from family and friends. I was a mess, and it wasn’t until God stopped me short and began to reorder my life that I began to experience contentment and purpose and peace.
In Augustine’s work, On Christian Doctrine, he talks about an order to our love and how we need to make sure we love God first, then others and ourselves, and then the things of this world. (pyramid) If we get the order wrong, life will fall apart, if we get it right, we can find contentment and peace and purpose. What God says is that our primary love, our first love, has to be Him.
The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The second is like it, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The love of others and a healthy love of self have to be secondary to our love for God. Everything has to be secondary to our love for God because when we begin to make our love for other things primary, we run into trouble.
If we love our job more than we love God and our families, it can lead to financial success but relational failure. Children know when they come in second to the job of their mother or father and that’s when families and marriages start to crumble. When we love money more than anything else it can lead to reckless behavior like gambling or get rich quick schemes which can quickly deplete all we have and endanger our family’s future. If we love alcohol more than anything, it can lead to physical problems and dangerous situations that can jeopardize relationships and jobs.
It’s not that loving our jobs or money or even a glass of wine is wrong, it’s getting our love for those things out of order that can be destructive. Love has to be ordered.
Love God
Love Others
Love Self
Love everything else
Not only can our love get disordered, but it can also get misdirected. There are times we find ourselves loving things that we just shouldn’t love. For example, if we are in a covenant relationship with a spouse, we shouldn’t be loving other people the same way. Those feelings might come up. We might feel drawn to someone in romantic and emotional ways and it might be tempting to entertain those feelings because it is exciting, or the other person makes us feel good or valued when our marriage is struggling, but that is a misdirected love. Jesus said we shouldn’t entertain those thoughts because it will lead us astray.
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27-28
Jesus is clear that entertaining the idea of loving someone we shouldn’t is dangerous and while the feelings and emotions might come up, we need to see it as misdirected love and work to direct our love back to the right places. We need to direct our love to the right relationships and always make sure God is at the foundation.
Another example from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is that there are times we might actually love to hold on to bitterness and anger. If we are honest, it can feel good to lash out at others when we are mad and hold on to bitterness and look for opportunities to pounce and hurt others, but Jesus said,
I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. Matthew 5:22-24
When we love being angry at someone it is misdirected love. We love the feeling of anger and getting revenge more than we love God or others. This is something we shouldn’t love and we need to see it for what it is and work to let it go, to release it, and forgive. Forgiveness helps us direct our love back to God and then allow that love to shape us.
We will all experience the struggle and temptation of disordered and misdirected love. Sin is missing the mark. Disordered and misdirected love is missing the mark and we all find ourselves there at times. Every once in a while we need to stop and reflect on the order and direction of our love. Is our love ordered the right way? Is our love directed toward the right things or are we loving the wrong things and in the wrong order?
When Moses was getting the people ready to move into the land God had promised, he took a moment to remind them how they needed to love. They couldn’t love the land and the abundance of food they were going to get or the military success they were going to have more than they loved God. Their love had to remain ordered and directed. Moses said,
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9
If they did this, things would go well with them. That was God’s promise. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Deuteronomy 6:3
Loving God first still helps us make sure that things will go well for us. It is easy for our love to get misdirected. It is easy to get the order of love wrong. So it’s important from time to time to stop and ask ourselves, is the foundation of our life love for God? Is our order of love right?
To use a circle example, if we look at concentric circles of love with God in the center, others second, us third, and the world fourth, the question becomes, Is God at the center? If it is, then our love for God radiates out through all the other things we love? If God is at the center, then all our love is healthy and strong and leads us to life. If God isn’t at the center, things will slowly fall apart. Even if we are loving good things, our love is out of order, or misdirected, which in time will lead to chaos and confusion and sin.
Is God the foundation of your love? Is God at the center of your heart and all that you say and think and do? If not, how can you bring your love back in order? How can you build on the right foundation? Today I want to invite you to examine what it is you love the most. Is your love ordered and directed after God’s will? Hear this again, love the LORD our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all strength because when we do, things will go well and God will bring blessing and peace.
Next Steps
Disordered and Misdirected Love
Take time to reflect on these three questions.
Who are the people you love the most?
What are the experiences you love the most?
What are the things you love the most?
St. Augustine says that our love needs to be ordered in the right way.
Love God
Love Others
Love Self
Love everything else
Is this the order of love in your life?
Is love for God the foundation on which all other love is built?
How can you grow in your relationship with God?
Check out the resources at bellefontefaith.com/3R.
How can you grow in the rhythms of passion, scripture, prayer, obedience and identity?
Take time to reflect on any misdirected love in your life?
Read Matthew 5:21-30
Are there things you love that you need to let go?
For further study: Read Matthew 4:1-11.
How do the three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness show us the importance of rightly ordered love?
How was Satan tempting Jesus to love the wrong things and in the wrong order?
