01/Feb/2008
Love’s Drug
Let us love one another, for love comes from God. (1 John 4:7)
By Jay Hogewood
Pastor, University Baptist Church
This year Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday come early enough to dance with another kind of holiday: Valentine’s Day. This trinity of dates offers an odd mix of festivity and faith, as well as Lenten reflection and love’s infection. Amid the swirl of such diverse thoughts, I couldn’t help but turn mine to one of the world’s major mental health calamities. Have you heard? It’s love.
Last Feb 14th, Cupid hit a rather large target. The Wall Street Journal’s Tara Parker-Pope wrote that studies are showing how love triggers changes in the brain that are a much like drug addiction and other obsessive-compulsive disorders. Not that love is a bad thing; but proof that it is indeed a powerful thing. Love, in point of scientific fact, is the thing that can make you crazy.
The science of it: magnetic resonance imaging doesn’t lie. You show someone a picture of the person they are deeply in love with and that very picture has the power to trigger the dopamine system in the brain. Then the grey matter takes over: the brain-chemical serotonin rises and being “love-struck” looks strikingly similar to mental illness.
But by the biblical perspective, love is not only the gift of God that makes us weak-kneed and woozy. God’s love is also the gift that makes us think straight and act right. Love is passion in action. It changes our disposition and strengthens our belief.
So for sanity’s sake, we can remember again that God authors love, whether it’s shared by a young couple or an aging widow and her great niece. Cupid and his arrows have nothing on the real power of love. Because once we finish off the chocolates and after the roses die, God’s love bounces forward. Brain to brain and soul to soul.
No MRI needed,
Jay
Let us love one another, for love comes from God. (1 John 4:7)
By Jay Hogewood
Pastor, University Baptist Church
This year Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday come early enough to dance with another kind of holiday: Valentine’s Day. This trinity of dates offers an odd mix of festivity and faith, as well as Lenten reflection and love’s infection. Amid the swirl of such diverse thoughts, I couldn’t help but turn mine to one of the world’s major mental health calamities. Have you heard? It’s love.
Last Feb 14th, Cupid hit a rather large target. The Wall Street Journal’s Tara Parker-Pope wrote that studies are showing how love triggers changes in the brain that are a much like drug addiction and other obsessive-compulsive disorders. Not that love is a bad thing; but proof that it is indeed a powerful thing. Love, in point of scientific fact, is the thing that can make you crazy.
The science of it: magnetic resonance imaging doesn’t lie. You show someone a picture of the person they are deeply in love with and that very picture has the power to trigger the dopamine system in the brain. Then the grey matter takes over: the brain-chemical serotonin rises and being “love-struck” looks strikingly similar to mental illness.
But by the biblical perspective, love is not only the gift of God that makes us weak-kneed and woozy. God’s love is also the gift that makes us think straight and act right. Love is passion in action. It changes our disposition and strengthens our belief.
So for sanity’s sake, we can remember again that God authors love, whether it’s shared by a young couple or an aging widow and her great niece. Cupid and his arrows have nothing on the real power of love. Because once we finish off the chocolates and after the roses die, God’s love bounces forward. Brain to brain and soul to soul.
No MRI needed,
Jay
