Love, II

The issue of love is yet unresolved on this blog. What is love? What is its relevance in the matter of the existence or nonexistence of God?

Let us look to 1 John, chapter 4 (emphasis added):

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

This blog feels so easy when I can just copy-paste verses. The challenge now is analysis. Luckily, this part is easy too, because The Bible is very specific: God is love.

So, to understand love is to understand God. Great! Let's kill two birds with one stone, then, and figure out what love is according to 1 Corinthians, chapter 13:

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Well, that's God, then. God is all of these things. Though, obviously, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have some issues with these notions. Let's make this even easier, since God is love:

God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. God is not rude, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Frankly, this is sounding pretty ridiculous now. God is patient? Let's see...

pa-tience
-noun
1.the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.

2.an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner.

3.quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience.

Seriously, read the Old Testament, then try to tell me God bears provocation. God is as likely to kill you with bears for provoking him.

One can make an argument that God is patient with Israel, as it continually falls short of his expectations. All the same, there are times when God gets really super pissed and needs to be talked down, like in Exodus 32:

9 "I have seen these people," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation."

11 But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. "O LORD," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.' " 14 Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.


Moses appears more patient than God in this example. He also accuses God of planning to commit evil, an allegation God does not deny. While God relents at Moses's behest, this creates no shortage of problems:

1. God wished to perform an evil act in his anger. (Love is not easily angered, love does not delight in evil.)

One could argue God would not delight in this evil, but that would only alleviate part of the problem. Additionally, if there is objection to the accuracy of the word "evil" in this verse, I can't really help that - Christianity has had thousands of years to deal with such issues in this infallible text. I'll look into the Hebrew someday, but dammit Jim, I'm not a translator.

The fact that God didn't ultimately perform this act suggests that not performing it was the loving thing to do - God wouldn't have done the unloving thing. Perhaps it was his love-bond with Moses that made him spare them, not his love-bond or lack thereof with his people. This is akin to how God will let you die of cancer, but if you petition him in proper love he will (probably) save you.

So, does your love for someone determine what you'll do for/to them, or is their love in return what determines what you'll do? Food for thought. We will certainly come back to this topic.

2. God was going to destroy these people, rather than give them a chance to repent and move forward. (Love always protects, always trusts.)

It appears that Moses had more trust in his people than God did. But, I suppose God is cheating in this case, because he knows the hearts of men. Why would he trust in them? I'll spare you the full dictionary entry this time, but trust entails confidence. He who knows the truth of reality trusts the truth in perfect knowledge. (Of course, there's the issue of early OT God lacking omniscience, but that's its own topic.)

I contend that the word "trust" is categorically irrelevant concerning God. He either knows the Israelites will come around and obey (making his tantrum pointless,) or knows they won't (and therefore he wouldn't trust that they would.)

Continuing that note, I'm going to jump forward a bit here and attempt to knock a few of these out of the air, by saying that:

3. God exists outside of space and time. (I would certainly savor to hear an argument otherwise - please bring supporting data!)

The relevance of this goes beyond omniscience and trust: God would not need "an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay," as per the definition of patience. God is timeless, permanent, unchanging (supposedly.) Such a being is not "waiting" for anything.

Beyond that, God caused all things to begin, knowing how they would unfold. The beginning is as the end. It is all his will, his work. If I could do that, I don't imagine the word "delay" would factor into things in the least. God isn't just a boy sending away his box tops and waiting six to eight weeks for his x-ray glasses - God is the glasses, and the box tops, and the Postal Service, as it were. "Delay" is moot. "Patience" is moot. Massless space has no size, or color, or shape. Timeless beings have no patience and no need of it.

To round things out before I move on, I really need to say it. God? Persevere? How could he not? "Well, I'm all-powerful, but I guess I'll give up." Perseverance is nigh-meaningless when there is no difficulty at hand, against which to, you know, persevere. The only difficulties God faces are self-imposed: an adversary he created, and the hearts of those who he gave the freedom to reject him. To persevere against your own machinations is... well... I don't know if I want the word duplicitous here, or hypocritical, or unproductive, or pointless, or retarded.

So! Let's address this "love does not envy" stuff. Do not forget that God is a jealous God by his own words. Jealousy and envy... there is a difference of sorts, but it is somewhat lost in our language compared to the Hebrew.

We need to understand God's jealousy for what it is, then. It is described in terms of God's reactions to our not honoring him, or serving other Gods, or having idols. God is jealous for our devotion and faithfulness. If we worship elsewhere, we are betraying him (or at least, the Jews were betraying their covenant to him - not that they necessarily agreed to it in the first place.)

The penalty in this covenant for... well, almost everything, is death. Holy Sharia Law, Batman! Love kills you if you worship something besides love. I'd hate to see what hate would do.

It is unacceptable for you not to reciprocate God's love. That is the nature of his jealousy. Does this constitute as God wanting what he does not have? Envying? That's hard to say, really. We're not given specific and detailed insight into this jealousy. Suffice to say, if humans steal from one another out of envy, this is envy gone wrong. If love would kill in jealousy that which does not reciprocate, I would say that is jealousy gone wrong. It's wrong to steal, and it's wrong to kill. What you want is irrelevant, unless you're God.

God lives by a different standard. God is entitled to be loved. God must be loved. God has the right to want your love and to punish you for not giving it. It's that simple, and our feelings on the matter are insignificant.

One problem: love is not self-seeking.

Whoops. Tell me: if I loved you, and you didn't love me, but I demanded that you love me, was jealous for your love, could not tolerate that you would love someone or something else instead of me, and I took actions to punish you for not loving me, would that be self-seeking? If God is love, isn't facilitating his own desire for us to love him back self-driven?

Oh, sure, he gives us a choice: burn or bliss. Why do we need to make this choice at all? Why does he get to put us on the spot? Love is authority; it must be in order to make sense of all this. Why does he get to judge and punish? Love is justice.

Love is a demand. Love is an absolute. Does this sound like the way you use the word love? Does this comport to how you live your life?

Don't think this is just some obscure fire and brimstone stuff, taken out of context. This is how Jesus preached. This is the ideal, that you would be a child, seeking and submitting to your parent figure, or else you were branches cast into fire.

Love asserts. Love expects. Love needs, and love cannot tolerate refusal. Love is pretty hardcore like that.

Absolute love is absolute power and absolute justice. Everything must necessarily, fundamentally gravitate around love.

But, love doesn't envy, and love isn't self-seeking. Why seek, when you are everything, and whatever isn't part of you is nothing?

Love is kind, as well. This is for your sake, obviously. You need to be punished. Love is a full and intimate knowledge and embrace of what you are - and if what you are is evil, love must exponge you. But, love keeps no record of wrongs, of course. You can never be good enough for love, but it won't hold anything against you (except all that evil - that's why you repent, duh!)

If you can't see my point here, I'm establishing the basis that love must be all of these things, otherwise God cannot be love. Some people will say that God is all-loving and wants you into Heaven, but he's also all-just, and must send you to Hell if you don't repent. I think this misstates the scenario - if God were all-loving, he could not possibly do anything that would compromise perfect love. If God were all-just, he could not compromise perfect justice. The only way to reconcile these two is that they must be synonymous. To love someone is to hold them to justice.

This concept is expansive - nothing God is can be unless it is love. If God had any aspect of his being that was not a full and complete manifestation of nothing but love, God would not be love. God would be a being with love in him, but that love would exist independently, and it is necessary in this case that God be love itself.

God's creation of the universe was not a creative side or a productive side of his being - it was love. Love creates and produces.

God's punishment and forgiveness are not cruelty or justice - they're just love, pure and simple.

God cannot be any more or any less than love itself. And before God created time, space, man and earth, before he made anything at all, he was. Love is the root of all existence.

The totalitarianism of this sentiment is horrifying, especially considering that Yahweh is not the only god to lay claim to it; the notion that love is the root of all existence, however, is a nice sort of idealistic thought. Very anthropocentric, but nice.

We desire love, acceptance, purpose, meaning, understanding and fulfillment, and we desire it in the context of humanoid socialization. It's reassuring to look to the sky and see what feels like human authority. Of course, real human authority (the kind that walks and talks) is quite able to make use of this process for its own purposes. The power of a spiritual figure can be both comforting and controlling, a means to liberate or to oppress.

There is also a harsh reality all around us which we must face, and a good way to find solace in this pain and death is in assuming that it, too, must be the work of this god figure.

It is in this way that we have come to terms with a universe that is neither good nor evil, ascribed to it both traits based on our own need and circumstance, and in the case of the God of the Bible, reconciled this good and this evil as "love".

Perhaps I haven't made a strong enough case today. Perhaps this idea of love still seems compatible with this God to most believers. Fair enough, but I'm not done yet. I will continue this line of thought, and I will demonstrate its fundamental flaws as best I can.

Until then, I pray to God that we will all think for ourselves.

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What folly! O, cruelest irony,
That men, driven in the name of love,
Declare themselves from earthly bondage free
And ever owe their servitude above!