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Over the past two weeks, I have watched two movies that have led me to ask the question written above? The first was Sense and Sensibility. It’s a chick-flick, I know, but I like that genre actually. Plus, I was watching it with my wife. The second, interestingly enough is called The Terrorist Next Door. It is based on the real-life events surround a man named Ahmed Ressam, a man convicted of attempting to smuggle a bomb into the United States as part of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up Los Angeles Airport.

I won’t summarize the films, but only touch upon the parts that specifically relate to my question.

In the first, Sense and Sensibility, one aspect of the story involves a sister who falls in love with a man who eventually turns out to ditch her in order to save his own face and place in life. However, the story goes that he also was in love with her and eventually greatly regrets his decision to marry another woman in order to cover up an incident in his past.

In the second film, The Terrorist Next Door, the man who recruits Ahmed Ressam for Al Qaeda ran a Mosque in Canada and had a wonderful wife and little girl, both of whom are ignorant of what he is doing behind closed doors. By the end of the film, this man has been exposed as a member of Al Qaeda and is forced to remain out of the country and away from his family. But during the last scene of the film, his wife is shown saying something like this, “Even though he originally married me only to cover up his terrorist inclinations, he did fall in love with me and he is still loving and missing us now.” Those, of course, are not the exact words. The screen writer certainly did a better job than I, but the quote does capture the actual flavor.

In both of these instances, I was struck by this incredibly ridiculous and limited notion of love. For though I have no doubt that there were some genuine feelings on the part of both men, I have difficulty understanding how a woman (or anyone else) could believe they were truly loved as they ought to be loved when the men who supposedly loved them obviously loved something else much more.

In the first movie, the man obviously loved money and security and status more than he did the woman who had fallen for him. In the second, the man obviously loved his religion and terrorism more than his own wife and little girl. And yet, by the end of both films, we are supposed to believe that their love was rich and genuine.

And maybe to a certain degree it was legit. But if the standard for love isn’t high enough to exclude these two men, I have to think that the standard is much too low. For in both instances, the men valued their own desires more than the well-being of those they supposedly loved. So they are both exposed as lovers of self, rather than lovers of others. And if one loves himself above all, you have to believe that they loved others only with a view towards what those people could do for them. And that is by no means love.

Jesus said, “Greater love as no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And then He lived up to what He said, thank God, showing us through His death and resurrection what love is really about. Revealing the simple reality that if one’s love is for real, one will be willing to sacrifice one’s own temporal desires for the good of others, even unto death.

Can you imagine if everyone in the world subscribed to such a notion of love? What a great place it would be. If nothing else, our movies would at least be a whole lot better.