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LOOKING FOR SMARTER LOVE

It was a Saturday morning, May 5, 1945, on the war-torn Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa, and Private First Class Desmond Doss was up on the Maeda Escarpment along with 155 men of Company B, under the command of Lieutenant Gornto. The Americans were armed with TNT explosives and planning to knock out the pillboxes and Japanese trenches. And it was a day of fierce fighting, so bad the U.S. forces finally decided to retreat.
But this Private Doss, who, ironically, was a conscientious objector - a religious kid who wouldn't bear arms - stayed up on top of the hill while the others were scrambling down the cliff. He didn't have a gun or mortar shells, but he did have his medical kit; he was the official medic for all of Company B. And while the bullets whizzed by on both sides, and with explosions going off everywhere, this Christian young man dragged one wounded soldier and then another one over to the edge of the cliff and lowered him with a rope. For something like five hours, defying all the odds, he just kept rescuing soldiers, one at a time. It was hard to count, but they finally estimated that he had singlehandedly rescued 75 GIs.
The irony of it all was this: for months the battalion had kind of ragged on Desmond Doss. He was a Christian; he wouldn't carry a gun. He insisted on getting his Saturdays off each week so he could go to church. And more than once, he'd had a boot thrown at his head while he was saying his evening prayers by his bunk at bedtime. But now, with death in the air and booby traps and bullets all around, these 75 men were awfully glad to see the skinny kid with a Red Cross armband crawling over to rescue them. I'm proud to tell you that young Desmond Doss, on October 12 of that same year, stood in the Rose Garden of the White House and received the highest award there is, the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman himself. There's a photo of that event on the front cover of a marvelous new book out called Desmond Doss: In God's Care.
And you know, there's one verse of Scripture here in Philippians chapter one that reminds me of that old World War II story. The Apostle Paul is writing to his friends, the new Christians living there in the city of Philippi. And we've already studied that great verse where he expresses his confidence that the same God who began a work in these infant believers, is going to bring them into maturity and full-fledged discipleship.
But now in verse nine is an additional thought, and it has to do with the kind of self-sacrificing love in this Desmond Doss story. Notice:

"And this is my prayer," Paul writes, "that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."

And hit the pause button right there, because that is a most interesting concept: that love and knowledge and insight all go together. "That your love may abound in knowledge," Paul writes, "and in depth of insight."
I guess that for most of us, and most of the time, we think of love as a heart thing, not a head thing. We love someone, or someTHING, like our cigarettes, often DESPITE our knowledge. Our romantic love is swayed by emotion or our feelings or a person's perfume. Knowledge and insight have very little to do with it. But here Paul proposes a love that abounds in knowledge, that is made deeper by insight. I appreciate the Clear Word paraphrase of the same intriguing verse:

"I pray that the love you have for one another will become deeper and stronger and that it will be INTELLIGENT and morally discriminating."

Let's think for a moment about the most obvious example: our marriages. And yes, we all do grow in married love beyond the honeymoon flutters, the giddiness of stolen kisses and those first glances across the room. But what a good challenge to have intelligent love, a love made wise and morally discriminating by a person's growing spiritual maturity.
Sometimes even in a good Christian relationship, a moment of anger or jealousy will hit. Even a saint can get his feelings hurt. You can get discouraged, even angry, waiting for your spouse to do their share. And according to the conventional wisdom, according to the breezes of temporary emotion, this would be a time to retaliate. Time for a feud. Time to lash out or maybe even MOVE out. Or push your partner out and change all the locks.
But hold on. The Bible, right here, calls for a person to have intelligent love. A love made stronger by KNOWLEDGE. And if you stop and think about what you know regarding the Bible's challenges and promises, you know a little something about forgiveness. You know about God's promise of a new beginning. You know that God can make you a better person and also your mate. And you know that you made a spiritual promise back on that wedding day that had something in it about "for better or for worse" and also about "as long as we both shall live."
It's the same idea, I think, in the area of health and lifestyle and the day-by-day decisions we've got to make there. I might LOVE a certain food more than I should, or a favorite recreation that takes too much time. But Paul is praying here that I might experience the kind of love that is morally discriminating. What does that mean? That means I want to honor God with my body, with my diet, with how I spend my leisure time. I can still love that occasional bowl of ice cream and still love that sporting event. But I seek God's wisdom in knowing how much is enough and how much is too much. It's an intelligent love, and it's the Bible and the Holy Spirit which give me the ability to love in a morally discriminating way.

Now back to Okinawa and that blood-bathed Saturday morning. For Private Doss, it was his Sabbath, his day of worship. He didn't want to be out there in the battlefield; he'd rather be with his wife, Dorothy, sitting in a nice, quiet, safe Christian church. And here all around him were wounded men. Some of these same men had tossed curses his way, called him "mama's boy" and a whole lot worse when he refused to pick up a gun and when he asked for passes each week so he could get to church. Should he love these men now? Or just leave them? No one would have said a word if he'd just scrambled down the ropes himself.
But this tired, scared boy had a love not just made BETTER by his Bible knowledge - it was CREATED ENTIRELY from it. From a human point of view, he wouldn't have loved these fellow soldiers at all! Zero! They'd tormented him and gone out of their way to let him know HE wasn't much loved. And out on the battlefield, "love your neighbor" is always tempered by "every man for himself" and "save your own skin first."
But Private First Class Doss had a love that was created out of the Bible verse in John 15:13:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

It was a love created out of Second Peter 3:9:
"The Lord . . . [does not want] anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

And he had a love made stronger, better, more mature, by the book of Romans where it says:

"Love your enemy. . . . Bless those who persecute you. . . . Do not repay anyone evil for evil. . . . Do not take revenge. . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

Well, it's a great war story, and it certainly gives a different slant even to that word "war," doesn't it? But even more is that powerful picture of intelligent love, a love that is given grip and tenacity and maturity by Bible wisdom. And you know, through the rest of this wonderful first chapter in Philippians, we see how intelligent love, wise love, makes all the difference.
I've already mentioned how Paul is in prison here. Normally a person would lash out, curse and complain, scream at the guards, and rattle his tin cup against the bars in daily protest. But not Paul. He has a mature love; he's able to rejoice and also reach out in love to his captors.

Down in verse 15 he writes about some so-called religious people - maybe misguided, maybe even fakes and charlatans - who are preaching about Jesus. Some of their doctrines are probably wrong; at least a few of them are in it just for the money . . . the first Rolls Royce televangelists! And here Paul is helplessly languishing in prison while they build up their direct-mail mailing lists and their Web sites. But he writes instead in verse 18: "It's all right. Even if these guys are ripoff artists, Jesus is still being preached! Christ isn't going to be defeated! I can continue to rejoice, because, despite all the problems, the word is still going out!" Friend, that's intelligent love; that's mature rejoicing through adversity.
Then at the very end, verse 27, he gives an additional challenge:

"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ."

And of course, it's only through this miracle of intelligent love that we can do that. That was the only way Desmond Doss did it on that miracle Saturday on the cliff. We can only behave in a worthy manner, act and live according to the blueprint, when we have inside of us the living Word which makes our love wise and worthy and lasting and forever.