Free Love

Is love really free?  Today, we break down the myth of free love and talk about the cost of love.

We'll talk about the origin of the free love movement, the power of a hulking hero, and the dangerous cost of becoming weak in the knees for love.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

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Scott Beyer 0:00

Standing with the sunlight behind him on a cold New York morning with a congregation of almost 300 in front of him. John, the preacher, stood up to speak to the assembly about love. He preached about modern marriage and the necessity of love and affection to be free and unfettered. He talked about how society had degraded and corrupted love with its bigotry and traditionalism. John went on to say that rigidity and rules had come in and they were destroying love. He said, God never intended love to be that way. He preached that they were really tolerant, really open to love. They should get rid of all the constraints that society had put on them and reject traditional marriage values. Real marriages should be open to being complex and looking different depending on how everyone felt about it. He pounded the pulpit and he said, men and women should embrace free love. Can you guess who preached that sermon? I can almost guarantee you you're wrong. His name is John Humphrey Noise and he preached that sermon in 1848, yet you heard me right. 1848, not 1969. Woodstock, not 2022. Open-minded. John Humphrey Noise is the founder of the Oneida community. Oneida you know, the company that makes the silverware. Well, John started that company, but he didn't just start it. He started AE too. In 1848, John Humphrey Noise settled in Oneida, New York and rallied his followers by coining a new term for relat. Free love. I'm Scott Beyer, and this is the Love Better Podcast, where we explore the truths and the lies about love. And more importantly, how to make love a skill, something we can get better at and hone along the way. Today I want to challenge the idea of free love. This idea that love doesn't cost anything and should be without boundaries, was John Humphrey Noise. Today's culture certainly seems to think so, but I think John and the culture get it wrong. I don't think love is free at all. I think love is supposed to be very costly and for the record, history says it was pretty costly for Preacher John too. But you can Wikipedia that if you'd like. Does the Bible say love is? Or expensive. Is it tolerant or intolerant? We want God's answer on the topic, and in order to do that, we need to go to the Old Testament and look at the life of a young man that was in the words of the old country song, looking for love in all the wrong places. We need to look at Sampson. Now you may be thinking you know Sampson's story, but indulge me for a moment. I think there's so much more to glean from Sampson's life than just the tale of a judge with long hair and bulging biceps. I think Sampson tells us the exact price of love, and it definitely isn't free. The life of Sampson has given us in the book of judges from chapter 13 through chapter 16. In order to understand him, we have to understand where he came from. Sampson is born to a man named Manoah and his wife during a time of. Occupation. The nation of Philistia had invaded and conquered Israel leading to occupation, taxation, and persecution for Israelites everywhere. Philistines were brutal and clever historically. They were technologically advanced in comparison to most other nations, and they were exceedingly wealthy due to their naval skills and access to the trade routes of the mediterra. In this story, Felicia is the superpower, and Israel is the impoverished third world country. They don't even stand a chance. The Philistines had been the successful aggressors for 40 years. For most Jews, this was the only life they knew. A life of hardship. Under the hand of Accrual Nation enter Sampson. An angel tells his parents they're going to have a child and that child will deliver the. He'll be under a Nazarite vow, no grapes, no hair cutting, no fermented drinks, and no touching dead bodies. Even if your close family died, you had to stay away. He is, as far as we can tell, the first and only child to his parents, and they name him Sampson, which means sunlight. So let's put this in perspective. Sampson is this ray of sunlight from God brought into his parents' lives. He lives a life different from all the other children, and his birth comes with an angelic expectation that he will be the savior of his entire country. Can you imagine growing up with that sort of weight on you? And on top of that, as he gets older, he is rejected by a woman who is supposed to become his wife. After she tricks him, he is betrayed by his friend that then takes her to be his wife. And then even after he has gained superhuman strength, his countrymen reject. For fear that they will be attacked by the Philistines if they're found to be allies with Sampson. So Sampson Trudges on He fights battle after battle, decimating the Philistine army alone. Oh, and somewhere during the 20 years, he is single handedly waging war against the Philistine occupiers. His father dies and per Nazareth laws, he can't even say goodbye the way his son normally would. Samson's. Is a story of loneliness, A lonely war fought by a solitary man, without friends, without companions, and rejected by even his own countrymen. His life is social distanced to the max. This isn't an excuse for some of Samson's behavior. I do not want you to confuse me on that point, but the Bible does lay out a clear explanation of how we get to the stage of Samson's life that he is most well known for. Enter Delilah. I'm just gonna read to you the exact account of Samson's relationship with Del. After this, it came about that he loved a woman in the Valley of Soak, whose name was Delilah, the Lords of the Philistines. Came up to her and said to her, entice him and see where his great strength lies and how we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him. Then we will each give you 1100 pieces of silver. There's that word. Did you catch it? The only person Sampson is ever said to have loved was Delilah. But even at his wedding feast in chapter 14, it doesn't say that he loved that woman. It just simply says she looked good to him. Sampson has lived this lonely life, and then he goes looking for love, and he finds Delilah, but Delilah doesn't love him back. This love is not Recipro. Which brings us back to the phrase free love, that one that our culture is so fond of. Sampson and Delilah are two consenting adults. Shouldn't this arrangement be fine? After all, free love means you can love whoever you want, right? And whoever you want to love should be a good thing, right? Wrong. For Sampson, love is anything but free. Delilah entices him to disclose the secret to his supernatural God-given strength. She wants to know where he gets it from so she can subdue him. He fends her off several times, but eventually his love for Delilah wins the battle after he thwarts her enticement three times. Listen to how Delilah entices him the. Then she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? Delilah knows the cost of real love, and Sampson really loves her. He has to tell her everything he has to give her his heart. The real cost of love is vulnerability and being vulnerable is anything but free. Sampson does end up telling her and it costs him his eyes, his freedom, and eventually his life. Sampson loses everything for Delilah. Where's that free love for Sampson? The answer is no. Love is free. The deeper the love, the more it costs. Sampson loved Delilah, and most notably, he loved her more than he loved his relationship with God. The wrong kind of love will pitch you against God instead of driving you toward him. I made mention earlier of an old 1980s country song by Johnny Lee. The chorus includes the line, looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces, searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I'm dreaming of. That is exactly what Sampson is doing. He's lonely. He's hungry for affection. Even his family is gone, and Delilah enters the picture as an object for his love. The New Testament calls this arrangement being unequally yoked. Delilah wants money and Sampson wants Delilah's heart, and the two of them are tied together, but they are not at all pursuing the same things. Proverbs tells us that we need to guard our hearts for out of them come the well springs of life. The truth is that your heart can love and grow to love just about anything in anybody. If you are married, there is a day somewhere in the past where your spouse was still a stranger, but you fed love and you nourished it and it grew in your heart and theirs. Even friendships are just strangers we've spent enough time and energy on until we change their relationship status from unknown to friend. and that's the lesson of Sampson. Free love doesn't exist. It costs us something to build relationships, and it costs us something to maintain them, and sometimes the cost is too high. Part of loving better is recognizing that sometimes you better set some boundaries, because if you're gonna give your heart to the right people, you'd better well not let the wrong people steal it. Jesus called this process of proper boundaries, loving more. In Matthew's account of Jesus' life, he tells of a time where Jesus said, he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Jesus literally says, you shouldn't love everyone the same. We must love the right relationships. More. This is a valuation statement. Don't give your heart fully to those who will destroy it. Don't put your energy into deep, intimate relationships with the Delilahs because they will cost you too much. Guard your heart said boundaries for love, and stick to those boundaries because when you are feeling lonely, hurt, hungry for affection or isolated, you better believe the wrong people will come knocking at the door of your heart looking to be let in. By the way, do you know what Delilah's name means and means? Fee. Delilah loved money and that made her weak, and so she decided to take Samson's strength from him. He let her take him out of the sunlight of God's love. Love better. Love with boundaries. If you've listened this far, hopefully we've done something to help make your life better. Would you mind returning the favor and helping us? By subscribing to the podcast through your favorite platform, sharing with others, or leaving a review on Apple Podcast, you help us reach more people. So until next time, remember, you are loved, so go love better.