You Asked: How Can Love Ever Be A Sin?

As we work to untangle the influence of the American culture from the Christian faith, we respond to a listener’s question about our culture’s belief that love can never be wrong. Before we work our way toward more difficult topics about love and sexuality, we have to first determine whether we are going to prioritize the teachings of our faith or the desires of our heart whenever they don’t line up the way we expect. Knowing which we give priority to helps us determine whether we are following Jesus, the culture at large, or our own formulation of faith. We also examine one of the foundational assumptions of the Christian faith, that sin has tainted everything in this world, including our desires and our best intentions, and we talk about how strange this sounds to those of us who have grown up in spiritual traditions influenced by the language of therapeutic self-help.