God "Is": And We "Are" Only In Relation To God

Of God

"God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”  Exodus 3:14

I've always loved this passage, because it demonstrates one amazing thing about the universe: There is no frame of reference that can define God.

When we describe things, we do so by placing them in a larger frame of reference, by relating them to something already known. We say, "The sun is a big yellow ball in the sky," because we are speaking to people who already understand what "big," "yellow", "ball," etc. already mean. We describe things in relation to something else.

But that method falls flat when it comes to describing or defining God. Moses asks God who he is, and God replies by merely saying "I am ME." Because there is no "larger frame of reference" that we can use to really define God as he is. There is nothing that God exists under, no larger category of things, that we can use to make sense of him.

And since we know that this God is also the creator of everything, we can arrive at another awesome truth: God Himself is the definition by which everything else is defined.

Of Creation and Humanity

Everything is ultimately defined by its relationship to God. The easiest example is the word we use to describe the universe, a word so integral to our idea of the universe that it was inescapable even by Darwin himself: "Creation." The core essence of the universe and everything in it is defined by that one word: Its relationship to its creator is not merely one of many attributes, but the core identity of the thing itself.

Of course, this extends to humanity itself. We are, at bottom, created beings. And we are defined by our relationship to our Creator. Karl Barth says it in a particularly awesome way:

"The being, life and act of man is always quite simply his history in relation to the being, life and act of his Creator."

Everything about us is defined in relation to our Creator and our God. We cannot be defined apart from him; We do not act apart from him; We do not even exist apart from him. We are not "Creations of God, and etc." Everything that I am, I am in relation to God.

Of Knowledge and Love

This means, of course, that accurate knowledge of humanity must, by necessity, be grounded in accurate knowledge of God. Human existence is derived from God and God only, and any claim to knowledge of humanity without a corresponding knowledge of God will be faulty and incomplete.

And, also by necessity, any attempt to bring about the good of humanity requires a true and accurate knowledge of humanity. Which means that any attempt to bring about the good of humanity, or of any one person in particular, requires a knowledge of God.

Which means that any attempt to simply "love" humans, to do away with "confining, divisive theology" and simply get on with the business of "love", is a non-starter. 

To love someone is to desire their good. And this isn't just desiring good feelings, but real, actual, capital "G" GOOD. Loving someone is to desire for them to fulfill their identity, to be who they were created to be, to do what they were created to do.

It has to do with ultimate Good, and that means that it has to do with God. For how can you know what is "Good" for someone until you know what they are, and what they are for? And how can you know what they are until you know who created them, and what they are for until you know what they were created for?

It always comes back to God and our knowledge of him. It always comes back to the dogmatic letters of Paul and his dogged claim to faith and truth, to the hard, unyielding truths that Jesus proclaimed over and over again, though it drove his followers away.

And we would do well to remember that while God is, indeed, Love, that does not mean that everything that we call "love" is God.

NOTE/EDIT:

James (see below) makes the valid point that non-Christians can (and do) show true, real love every day. And, of course, people attempt to show love every single day (and often succeed).

However: When push comes to shove, we have to affirm that "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick." And when we try to love well, to work for the Good of our beloved, the ultimate guide for that has to be our knowledge of God. If we try to work backwards from our own love and our own heart and use that as a portrait for God, we're going to end up with a lie, and a desperately sick one at that. We have to work from our knowledge of God, and use that to effect love.

Without Love

“If I have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2

Like it says in my bio, I write on anything that strikes my mind long enough to make it onto the computer. It’s usually sparked by something in my life: In this case, it was an episode of Bones.

This particular episode features a child who’s been systematically abused by both her mother and father. As they’re being interrogated, the husband knocks the wife to the ground to stop her from admitting the abuse. Immediately, the interrogating agent yanks him upright, shoves him against a wall and knocks him out with a punch. The anger on his face is, if possible, even more angry than his punch, and as I watched it, I became angry myself. To be honest, I don’t think any person could watch this without getting caught up in it. But why?

After all, I don’t get caught up in it as much with the “regular,” run-of-the-mill murderers in the show. I don’t get as angry at the prospect of someone killing a stranger for his money, or killing their boss out of anger. In theory, beating someone isn’t as bad as outright killing them, so why am I so angry? Why does this infuriate me so much more than the “normal” murders on the show?

I think it’s this: There is something sickening about a man who assumes authority without love. There is something loathsome about a man who uses his authority to harm rather than help.

Paul knew this. He knew that when he told wives to submit to their husbands, that there was potential for men to seize upon this idea of authority and twist it. And so immediately after that,  Paul tells us that the duty of the husband is “to love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her… Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.” This is in no way of less priority than the authority and headship Paul speaks of earlier. It is, instead, of greater authority: Paul repeats himself, tying it repeatedly and explicitly to Christ’s love for the church.

And the love Paul speaks of here isn’t a mere passive feeling; it is active. Bound up in this idea of love is protection and service and self-sacrifice. This isn’t the qualification for an “exceptional” marriage: This is what marriage itself is supposed to be. This is not a suggestion, or a helpful tip, or something “extra”. This is the God-given duty of every husband towards his wife, and it’s a duty that the husband is generally specifically suited to fulfill.

So back to Bones. That man was physically stronger than his wife. He was more aggressive, better able to handle physical pain, and highly protective–all traits which were supposed to be selflessly used in her defense.  He was meant to be protective of his wife and wildly aggressive towards anything which would threaten her, using his strength and even his very body, his flesh and bones, to defend her, no matter the pain it brought him. He was meant to be willing even to die in her defense, as Christ did.

So why is my reaction, my anger, so much stronger towards the man who beats his wife and child, instead of the common murderer? Part of it is that the man is using what God gave him for the protection of his family to harm his family. He used his strength to beat his wife and daughter. The only person he cared to protect was himself, and he turned his aggression towards his own family when he was threatened.

He is inhuman. Moreover, he is unmanly. And, to be honest, all sin is inhuman. All sin is a perversion of what we are supposed to be: Misplaced passion, wrong desires, twisting and distorting what should have been good until it becomes evil. But this–this is a complete reversal, an utter and complete betrayal of everything it was supposed to be. There is nothing good left in it, when it could have been and should have been an amazing instance of theology in the flesh, a literal incarnation of the great love Christ has for His Church.

The man who beats his wife is less than a man, and I think almost everyone understands that on some level.  But that’s only a part of it. Because as I think about it, I realize there is something else in the anger. It’s the knowledge that every selfish decision on my part, every time my first instinct is to serve myself instead of my wife, is a step in that direction. It’s the knowledge that a husband could become that,  that it happens, that men who apparently set out to love their wives can devolve into that. It’s the knowledge that I could become that. It’s the knowledge that this is what happens when authority is separated from love.

And it terrifies me.

Yet, I have hope. I have hope in God, and in the love he has shown to us. I have hope that because God loves me, I can love my wife. I have hope that I can remain a man, that I can love her in leading her and serving her.

When marriage goes wrong, it goes very wrong. But when marriage goes right… when marriage really goes right, it is literally a taste of heaven on earth, an earthly manifestation of a heavenly thing, a mystery as profound and marvelous as the Israelites’ Tabernacle, covered in precious metals and sparkling with precious stones.

And that is what I strive for, every day.

Self-Sufficiency

I was checking facebook the other day when I saw a post rejoicing over the miracle of divine love. The poster says, "I couldn't live without Jesus," acknowledging the dependence we have on Christ first for mere existence, then for a fulfilling, meaningful life as well. However, this sense of dependence is then said to go both ways: "He couldn't live in a world without me so He chose to die and rise again." Unfortunately, such a statement, while stemming from a desire to honor and praise God, actually greatly decreases the wonder of the cross and the love God bears for us. It contaminates the selfless love of Christ with the selfishness that is inherent in even the best of human relationships.

The more I think about this, the larger the issue becomes. I am reminded of my time with jr. high children, and vague memories of my own time at that age: The class is asked, "Why did God create us?" The answer(usually coming from a boy, and, at one time, probably myself) is that God was bored. That God wanted someone to play with.

We are faced with two questions.Why did God create us? Why did God die for us? And the two given answers, though stemming from vastly different attitudes--one from a desire to make a joke, the other from a desire to give glory to God--share the same basic flaw. They push our sense of dependence onto God.

Although the child jokes when saying that God was bored, he is working from a very basic premise: "When I am alone, I am bored." Most humans are dependent on others, to one extent or another, for everything, from  food and housing to basic entertainment. The child then naturally extends this sense of dependence to God.

The poster on facebook, likewise, understands the very basic principal that we are dependent on Christ. "In him we live and move and have our being," and without him we would not exist. But even granting the common grace that Christ gives to all humanity and, indeed, all creation, we still cannot live, with meaning and joy and true purpose, without his special grace. The poster also recognizes that when we love someone or something, we often become dependent on that thing. I am dependent on my wife. My earthly happiness is wrapped up in her, and when she is not with me, it is diminished.  The poster then puts this same sense of dependence on Christ himself. "He could not live in a world without me." 

And this is where the poster is wrong. Because in saying, "he could not live in a world without me," the poster ascribes a certain motive to Christ's death. And this motive is not love, as it first appears. If Christ could not live without us, then his death is no longer in love. It is self-preservation. It is protecting that which he is dependent on. It is selfishness (and, indeed, most human love is contaminated by selfishness, as demonstrated by Lewis in The Four Loves, The Great Divorce, and 'Till We Have Faces). 

God created us. He loves us. He died to save us... but that is not the same as saying that he could not live without us. Indeed, if he could not live without us, it would be no great feat of love to die for us: it would be mere self-preservation. And it is here that we begin to realize the true extent of his love for us. The greatness of his sacrifice, the proof of his unselfish love, lies in his complete self-sufficiency. He needs no one but himself... and still he dies to save us. To make God dependent on us in any fashion is to reduce his love to a merely human level... and that is so much less than the independent, self-sufficient fullness that he pours out on us for no other reason than his loving will.

Love and Tolerance

A few weeks ago, an image was posted on imgur.com that raced across facebook and other social media. It appears that there was a gay pride parade in Chicago, at which a Christian group showed up with signs: Signs reading "I'm sorry for the way the church has treated you" and other similarly toned messages. The picture, view-able here, shows a man clad only in underwear embracing, and being embraced by, a member of that Christian group. So far, so good, right? The church screwed up big time a while back, and we're still dealing with the consequences. It's good to see Christians showing love to the homosexual community.


But there is a problem: If not with the act itself, then with how it was perceived by people at large. Go back to the picture and scroll down to the comments. "This is the Christianity I grew up with! Finally... some tolerance!" "Tolerance and Acceptance...you're doing it right." Finally, one that really sums up the problem: "It's a new time of acceptance and allowance. Love reigns..."

Those of you who regularly read my blog may remember a post I did a while back regarding the world's perception of love and tolerance. Judging by the comments on the image, the world is incapable of separating "love" and "tolerance." To the world (and an increasingly large number of Christians), it is unthinkable that you can love someone, and not be tolerant/accepting of their lifestyle. 


I'm going to use an analogy now. And, as with all analogies, their is a danger in it being misunderstood. The only purpose of this analogy is to demonstrate that one can love a person and still seek to change a core aspect of who they are. Understood? Let's take a man with a heart condition. Let's say he has a hole in his heart that gets microscopically bigger with each beat: Let's even say this condition was congenital--he was born this way. In ten or twenty years, he will die. Can you love the person, yet insist he get treatment for it? Of course you can. 


But that's not the same as homosexuality, clearly. That's a purely physical condition, whereas homosexuality is a matter of mind and spirit. So let's take mental illness (note: analogy). Here I should say that I have extensive personal experience in being close to and loving someone who is mentally ill. Often, the illness can very nearly define the person suffering from it, and, to make things worse, the sufferer will often refuse to believe that they are even mentally ill. The illness has been with them so long, it influences every single thought they have, it extends into almost every portion of their being... it seems perfectly, utterly natural to them (indeed, to them it is natural) and they do not understand why they need to take medication, because they're fine, they really are. 


Now: Can you love someone who is mentally ill and, in love, try as hard as you can to get them to take their medication? Indeed, it seems as though that's the only loving thing to be done. It would not be loving to tolerate their illness as something natural, even if it is something they were born with (although here, my personal experience does not extend). It would not be loving to accept their dangerous illness and leave them be. 

That is not love.

But it is tolerance. It is acceptance. It is allowance. And its result is apathy and death.

As a Christian, I believe that homosexual actions are sinful. I understand that to many homosexuals, their homosexuality is a key part of their identity, and I am NOT saying that homosexuals are in any way less human than any other person. But as a Christian, I believe that the proper response, indeed the only response, is to do as Jesus did to the woman caught in adultery: To love the person wholeheartedly, and show absolute intolerance for the sin. "Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and sin no more." Jesus does not condemn her for her sins... BUT neither does he give her (or us) any room for thinking that her lifestyle is acceptable to God. Jesus loved her, not her lifestyle, and he seemed to easily separate the two.

The Loving Father

Many people like to point to the Old Testament and say that the God of Christianity is only one more angry god of ancient times, cruel and proud and bloodthirsty. To say that the God of the Old Testament is an angry God is only fair, after all: it seems as though the Lord's anger is often burning at at least some portion of his people (Ex. 4:14, 2 Kings 23:26, Isaiah 5:25, and those are just 3 results from an internet search). But there are lots of angry gods in the various mythologies of the world. There's Bacchus, who so clouded the mind of a woman that she killed her own son and stuck his head on a pole and paraded it around the city. There's Moloch, who demanded child sacrifice. There are the countless gods of bloodstained altars, whose temples ring with the screams of the unfortunate chosen. All of these gods, as well as the God of the Christians and the Jews, could be fairly called "angry." But it is only the Christian God whose anger is that of a father spanking his child for running out in front of a car. It is only in Christianity that the flames of divine anger are fueled by the fiercer and more fiery flames of divine love.

Now, the modern world doesn't really seem too keen on the whole "spanking" thing, anymore. But to go to my original example: a stranger won't care that some kid ran out into the street. Or if he does care, he won't be angry at the child. The parent, though... the parent will be furious at the child. Because of love. The child carelessly endangered his life, and the parent will speak harshly to the child, even spank the child, in a frantic effort to get him to understand that you do not run out into the street. It's dangerous out there.

This is the God of the Old Testament. This is the loving parent of an unruly, foolhardy child, who loves to not only cross the street without looking but actually engage in a game of hopscotch on the freeway. This is the God who laments that "Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me... Israel does not know, my people do not understand" (Isaiah 1:2-3). It is punishment, yes, even angry punishment: but it is punishment with a goal, an aim, and motivated by love. There is not one life at stake, nor one family: the entire people is at risk, and every mistake made, every child-sacrificer taken in, every false god not driven out, is a threat more deadly than any car. "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." And yet Israel fails to get the message. We fail to get the message. And we make mistake after mistake, long after any earthly parent would have given up in despair. And yet God remains, both to ancient Israel and to us, the loving father who is angry at his children, and punishes them, because he loves them so much more than they know.

Intolerance

One of the main complaints against the Church today is that it is intolerant: intolerant of other beliefs, intolerant of other lifestyles, intolerant of anything that disagrees with it. To this accusation, any self-respecting Christian should gladly plead "guilty." However, the Christian should also point out that, in calling us out on our intolerance, the accuser is himself being intolerant. We say, "You shouldn't do 'x'." The world says, "Oh, you shouldn't say 'shouldn't,' that's being intolerant." And this would be hilarious if the world got the joke. Anyway... you guys know this: this is Logic 101. The real point of this post is to say that tolerance is only the world's garbage version of something Christ had and the Church should have in abundance: love.

For some weird reason, the world sees the two as the same thing, or at least closely linked. They think that if you loved someone, you would be tolerant of their beliefs--if you are intolerant, that is proof that you do not love them. I have frequently seen people say that Christians should act more like Jesus--stop being so intolerant and show some love, you know? Alright, let's see what Jesus did. John 8: the pharisees bring a woman guilty of adultery to Jesus. Jesus blasts the pharisees, right? The pharisees were being intolerant, and Jesus wasn't having any of that! Just look at what he says to the woman: "I do not condemn you." See? Jesus is being so tolerant of the woman's "alternative lifestyle." (Note: this was sarcasm. I only say that because sarcasm is difficult to transmit through text). Read the very next words: "Go, and sin no more." By saying that, Jesus is being intolerant of her lifestyle of sin. He is not going to tolerate it. We do not see "tolerance" from Jesus: neither do we see the hateful garbage that certain "churches" spew on a daily basis. Instead, we see love.

And love is not some sort of crappy, lukewarm "middle ground." Love is fiery and passionate and active and moving--it seeks to change the bad and preserve the good, because it knows that the bad really is bad, and the good really is good. Jesus does not condemn the woman, because she has repented: but he immediately follows up with a command to sin no more. Love must include both of these sentiments, or else it is not love at all. Love is an active combination of acceptance of the person and rejection of the sin--and both acceptance and rejection must be extreme, even fanatical.

I wasn't going to say this, but I feel that this note demands it. Right now, in our fallen world, love has an integral, necessary counterpart: hate. Just as we are commanded to love people, we are commanded to hate what is evil. We cannot love people without hating sin. If we try, we will forget hate, and soon we will forget love. And there will be only silence as we sit and quietly tolerate our world, quite literally, to death.

"If you will, you can make me clean."

I've been thinking a lot about predestination vs. free will lately. What it comes down to, in my mind, is that going completely predestination, with no sense of real free will, means that Jesus does not want most people to get better.

Think about that.

It means that when Jesus tells all who are burdened and heavy-laden to come to him, it is inevitable to some (those he has already irresistibly called), and a taunt to everyone else, all the poor saps who will never receive rest because Jesus doesn't love them enough. Whatever terms you use, whether you separate divine desire from divine providence or insist on some sort of "totally depraved" free will that is no free will at all, that is ultimately what it comes down to. And that is not the Jesus I see in the Gospels.

Check out Mark 1:40. Jesus is just walking along, going from town to town in Galilee, preaching, and a leper comes to him and says, "If you will, you can make me clean." Most other translations say, "If you want to," or "If you wish." That is what he is saying. The leper says, "I know that you are capable of making me clean. I want you to make me clean. Do you want to make me clean?" Immediately, Jesus is "moved with pity" and says, "I will; be clean." Jesus wants to make him clean. He desires it. He doesn't hesitate. He doesn't test him further. This verse demonstrates Jesus' fundamental attitude towards humanity: "I want to make you clean. Be clean." This is Jesus' attitude towards literally everyone who comes to him or asks him for help. Now let's check out another instance, this time of a person rejecting Jesus' offer of help.

Flip forward to Mark 10:17-22. A young man comes up to Jesus and asks him how to inherit eternal life, saying that he has kept all the commandments since he was a child. And the text says that Jesus, "looking at [the man], loved him," and Jesus tells him that he still lacks one thing: he needs to sell everything he has and give it to the poor, so that he may follow Jesus and receive treasure in heaven. The young man, however, is unable to do this, so he goes away sad. This man comes to Jesus for help. Jesus loves him and tells him what he needs to do, actively calling him to follow. But the man is unwilling to do so and walks away.

Is Jesus just messing with the guy? Did he know that the young man would be unable to follow his teaching? Did he "call" him, but not really call him? It doesn't appear so. It appears as though Jesus loved him sincerely, called him earnestly, told him how to respond to that call... and yet the man walks away anyway. That's what appears to happen.

Reading the Gospels without an underlying assumption of free will makes for a very strange Jesus. Every time Jesus tells the people to come to him, it is either pointless (it would have happened anyway) or a taunt (they are literally incapable of following him). Pure predestination amounts to Jesus telling the lame man to pick up his mat and walk without healing the man’s lameness. Put that into spiritual terms and you have what the Calvinist Jesus does to all the non-elect. It is Jesus telling the Centurion that his son has been healed when in fact he has not, Jesus smearing mud on the blind man’s face not to restore his sight but merely to remind the man that he is blind and will never see.  It is mere mockery—mockery of the hapless damned, offering them glimpses of something that Christ has no intention of giving them.

To all Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ: I think you're wrong, but I love you. I pray that all of us continually strive for and, in fact, achieve greater maturity in the faith, as Hebrews 5:11-6:3 teaches.

Some Sort of Crazy Lover-Fighter Hybrid...

"I'm a lover, not a fighter." You have likely heard this phrase before: since its debut in the 1994 film "Little Rascals," it has become very popular indeed. Taken as a semi-witty justification of a lack of violence and/or violent acts originating from one's person, it's pretty alright. However, it can also be taken another way--as a philosophical statement pointing out a dichotomy (contrast or division between two things) between a "lover," presumably one who loves, and a "fighter," one who fights. Taken in this way, it is completely and utterly false.

This is apparent even from the movie which popularized the phrase. Alfalfa claims to be a lover, as opposed to a fighter, early on: by the end, he surely realizes the silliness of saying something like that as he finds himself fighting, yes, fighting, for the love of Darla. This is not mere semantics, mere wordplay. Being a fighter is a necessary part of being a lover. How can you claim to be a lover, yet deny being a fighter? How can you say you love something, yet in the same breath deny your willingness to fight for it? The statement is inherently nonsensical.

Enough Little Rascals. Let's talk God. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son..." God is the ultimate Lover. God invented love. Yet... "'Behold, I am against you,' declares the Lord of Hosts, 'and I will burn your chariots in smoke'" (Nahum 2:13). How about "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war?" (Job 38:22-3). You might be tempted to polarize these statements, to say that one demonstrates the love of God and that the other two demonstrate the wrath of God: one shows the lover and the others show the fighter. Not true. God's love, as shown in the first verse, is not passive. It is moving and active, and the sending of his Son was nothing less than an act of war on Satan, the ruler of this world (John 12:31). In the same way, God's love is demonstrated in the second two verses: he fights for his chosen people, for his beloved. The lover and the fighter cannot be separated: he who truly loves must fight, or else his love is no love at all.

Now to us. Many people claim to love good, and they say that it is because they love good that they are unwilling to fight evil. These people separate love from fighting, and they separate "good" from fighting as well. This is a false dichotomy. One who does not fight evil cannot truly love good, for the love of good is the hatred of evil.

One last thing: do not think that I am saying that all fighting is good, or that fighting necessarily means physical violence (I think that it can, but that's not the point). It's clear that fighting and violence can be evil: but they are not, in and of themselves, opposed to love and good. That much is clear from Scripture, from both the Father's and Christ's actions. Be a lover and a fighter. Love what is good. Hate what is evil. And remember why the Bible is called a sword.

Love pt. 2

So, my last note seemed (to me, at least) very disjointed and incomplete. Thinking about it, I realized that this was because I had tried to focus on the human aspect of love without addressing the divine aspect, which was, in hindsight, a ridiculous thing to attempt.

We were created in the image of a loving God, a God who is, in fact, love, according to 1 John. When we fell, we retained this image, albeit a now-broken, imperfect image. When we love, we are conforming more fully to God, becoming more like that image we were created in. However, even unfallen we were but images of God, not gods ourselves, and our fallen status further compounds this. All this to say that every single instance of human love is but a shadow, a distorted reflection in a broken mirror of the great love God has for his prodigal children.

I think this is why God gave us love, and people to be the objects of this love. Paul tells husbands to love their wives "as Christ loved the church." This goes both ways. If husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, that means that when a husband really loves his wife as he should, he experiences firsthand a shadow of the love Christ has for us, his church and his bride. Isn't that crazy? And it doesn't stop there. God is our Father; numerous passages attest to this. When a father (or mother) loves a child, he or she is experiencing a small portion of this divine love God the Father bears for us, his children. When we love, not only do we become more like God, but we experience in a small way the love God the Father has for us as His children, and the love Christ, God the Son, has for us as his bride, his beloved. This, to me, is mind-blowing.

Now I move to the other side of the coin. If, when we love rightly, we love as God loves, what happens when we experience pain arising from this love? What does that say about the pain a parent feels when a child runs away from home, scorning the parent? I am not a parent. Most of you reading this probably aren't either (most, not all. I'm pretty sure my mom reads this: hi, mom!). Picture this: your own child, that you have loved and raised and taken care of, as soon as he has the chance, betrays you, spits in your face and turns away from you. Imagine the pain you would feel. Then magnify this to infinity, and you have an idea of the sadness that God felt when He " was grieved in His heart" and said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth... for I am sorry that I have made them" (Genesis6:5-7). If you are married (or hope to be some day) imagine the pain of having the love of your life turn from your open arms and run, claiming never to return. Magnify this pain until you can think of nothing else, and you may come close to the pain that caused Christ to weep when he caught sight of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

Think about that. If you're anything like me, you don't think about it enough. Every time we sin, we are children rebelling against their Father, an unworthy bride running away from her infinitely worthy Lord. I leave you (and myself) with this thought: what we do, every tiny action we make, has consequences greater than we can imagine. Either we act in accordance with God's will, and please him, or we don't, and we grieve and disappoint our Creator, who knew and loved each one of us before we were made.

Undeserved Love

So, this coming Sunday is Valentine's Day. So I thought I'd write a note about the basis for Valentine's Day- love. I'm really getting stuck trying to figure out a good, funny (but not too funny, nor merely begging for laughs with some cheap joke) intro, so I'm just going to dive right in. Note that the love I am primarily addressing here is love between humans, which is in turn possible because of the love God has for us. I am not here attempting to write about this love God has for us, except in so much as it pertains to this unmerited gift of love.

Have you ever stopped to think about love? Have you ever wondered why we fallen humans can experience this divine thing? Love is not natural to fallen humanity; if you want proof, look at Genesis. Adam and Eve, the first two people, the two members of the first marriage, were in the garden, and although the Bible doesn't tell us much about life pre-fall, we have every reason to believe that Adam and Eve loved each other, living together in the truest form of wedded bliss. Then the Fall happened, and within minutes, hours at most, of this tragic event, Adam and Eve have fallen so far from this state of love that Adam's first reaction, when faced with the sin he committed, is to blame it on Eve. To have fallen so far, so fast, that instead of taking the blame for the person with whom he is literally "one flesh," he turns on her, attempting to divert the wrath of God from him to her... it boggles the mind. Love was natural for pre-fall humanity. Post-fall, love is unnatural, and every single instance of love in this fallen world is an example of grace straight from God.

We do not deserve this grace, this unmerited gift of God. We rejected the love of God in the garden, and in turn lost the natural ability and right to feel love ourselves. God chose to give us the ability to love again, the ability to feel a small portion of what He feels for us. 1 John tells us that love is from God, and that God is love. Because of this, I believe that when we love, we are being more like God than at any other time. Isn't that incredible? God gives us the ability to feel love and, in loving, be like Him. The next time you think about someone you love, whether it be a parent, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or just a good friend, think about that love for a minute. Remember that when we love, we are being like God. And thank Him for the opportunity to love.

This didn't exactly turn out how I had thought it would. Of all my notes and blog entries, it seems the most disjointed and unexplained. For this I apologize. I would love to clarify anything that is unclear, or discuss anything you think to be incorrect. Feel free to post a comment, whether you liked it or not.