Mucky Declarations

It seems to me that the love of God is actually one of the most controversial topics in the whole of Christian theology. We seem to have a hard time pinning down what the love of God is. We think it means things like 'the desire for all men to be saved' (which is certainly part of what His love entails) and we say things like "I can't believe that a loving God would condemn my kind old grandfather to hell" and we retch at the idea that a loving God would allow (or cause) horrors like the Holocaust or the Gulags or the Khmer Rouge or the bloodbaths of Rwanda. But the problem is that this sort of conversation begins with assumptions about what love is, and then continues by applying these constraints to God, rather than by considering it axiomatic and foundational that God is love and inquiring from that fixed point; i.e. we are to look to the action of God to parabolically describe the action of love. If we presume that love is primarily the unconditional accomodation of persons and their destructive behaviors, we must find God unloving, since He emphatically does NOT abide the wicked. God is not a doormat. If we presume that love is primarily universal provision for our felt needs, we must certainly once again find God unloving. God will not buy me a Mercedes-Benz. He will not prevent the lazy man from starving. But when we look to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we find a God who knows men intimately and sees the fullness of their iniquity. We find a God who punishes the sinful man. We find a God who is fair in all His dealings. We find a God who is consistently providing opportunity for restored relationship with Him, a God who makes reasonable demands of us, a God who keeps His covenants. And we find a God who sacrifices His greatest prize; that which is His very Self, the Son that proceeds from His Being; He becomes the Servant of all men and takes the bullet for all of mankind. And from this we learn that God is not a passive doormat; no, He is the one who actively lays Himself down. He is the one who causes the boots to fall; as Isaiah writes it pleased the Lord to crush Him. From this, we learn that the shape of love is cruciform. The shape of love is a man whose arms are spread wide in suffering, who in that open-armed suffering is embracing the world. So it seems to me that when we talk about love, we have to first talk about the God who suffers on behalf of His people, the God who is so pained by the discipline He must, in His loving justice, mete out to a stiff-necked people that He becomes that stiff-necked people and carries their iniquities and sorrows. And the implications for the Church are extremely disturbing, because we find that such a love is demanded of us; we have been baptized into such a love, a love that sees constant sorrows, a love that slits its own wrists for the life of the world, a love that could motivate such a one as Paul to write "I could wish that I myself were cursed, separated from Christ for the rest of my brethren." I heard a sermon a while ago where the speaker asked these questions: How would you feel if you knew that God was suddenly going to let everybody into heaven? Everybody meaning all Jews, all Moslems, all Buddhists, all chicken-worshippers, all atheists, all Satanists? Would you feel rage that God was being unfair, or would you rejoice at the depths of a mercy that could save even these? And how do you feel hearing this question right now? Do you want to hit me? And it seems an equally relevant question to ask: how great is your love for the world that God hath made? How great is your love for those around you? If such a thing were possible, would you let yourself be cut off from Christ that the rest of the world might gain Him?

# posted by Sir Omer : 12/07/2004 02:01:00 PM