Perversion of Love

Book excerpt: Perversion of Love aims to explore the reasons why we as Christians may struggle to love ourselves and others through the lens of what Dr. Gary Chapman defined, and what has been accepted by popular culture, as the five love languages. Christians have been given a Great Commission which is to spread the Gospel and make disciples. The method by which we fulfill this commission is the greatest commandments-to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. God created us to love, but we have an enemy whose goal is to destroy everything that God created, and his favorite method of destruction is perversion-the distortion, corruption, or alteration of a thing from its original course or design. So it makes sense that our enemy would seek to pervert the way we love ourselves and others in his attempt to stop the spread of the Gospel. So how does this perversion take place? I believe the enemy attacks us through our primary love language(s) and uses our very own parents as unwitting (and sometimes witting) participants to carry out his plan. Since we all receive love differently, the enemy will attack us in different ways, but there are some common tactics he uses depending on our love language. If we can learn to recognize the enemy's tactics for what they were/are, we can start the process of breaking the cycle of perversion in our lives and the generations to come. In doing so, we can learn to fully love God, ourselves, and others, and we will fulfill the purpose for which we were designed.