Cold Love

“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” (Matt. 24:12)

It's been said that truth is the first casualty of war. Perhaps the second is love. When people see the damage done by immorality, the first instinct is to reassert the old morality. Then, if you gain enough power, you can perhaps re-impose that morality. The desire to restore order in a world of moral anarchy is understandable. But our Lord and Savior warns us today that the worst casualty of that war may be our love.

Preachers rail at a culture that seems to have shut its ears to the Good News. So the solution is to just yell louder. That's what the street preacher I heard in Williamsburg during our family trip seems to think. He stood just close enough to a street to say that he was on public property, so that the police couldn't make him leave. And he yelled about escaping damnation. Meanwhile group of high school students visiting Colonial Williamsburg stopped to see the show, and to make fun of the street preacher.

My son later told me that he also goes on the campus of William and Mary and does the same thing. He seemed to save his angriest comments for the girls who dress too skimpily. Was his criticism of our permissive culture wrong? Probably not, but who cares about an angry guy who can't even take the trouble to be a friend to those whose souls he claims to care about?

The person whose soul you're trying to save won't care about anything you say unless he or she sees that you care about them. Are we called to be evangelists – communicators of the Good News? Absolutely. But perhaps what our Presiding Bishop calls "evangelistic listening" should be our first approach to that communication. Keep your love warm.