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Jesus was asked to name the "great commandment in the law." His reply lays the foundation for obedience to every commandment from God:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Mt 22:36-38).Adding an essential explanation of true love, Paul declared,
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love [charity], I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal....Though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing" (1 Cor 13:1-13)."Science falsely so called" (1 Tim 6:20) has lately decided to debunk human love under the guise of supporting it. "Science" claims to have identified a part of the brain where "lasting love" resides. Scientists have located the same in the brains of swans, voles, and grey foxes. Is it supposed to be an encouragement to a couple who, for example, has been married for 25 or even 50 years to know that there is a "scientific explanation" for what they had thought, all these years, was genuine love? Am I suggesting that if there is a scientific explanation for love, therefore love cannot be genuine? Yes! That raises the question, "What is genuine love?"
Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the language in the DNA molecule, was so enamored with science that he declared in triumph,
"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."Does it make one happy to have this epitaph pronounced on what one thought were genuine experiences of joy, altruism, sacrifice, satisfaction, and so forth? Why do I say that a "scientific" explanation of these emotions, which are so real in our lives, pronounces their death?
