How much more time are we going to waste trying to get God to love us? This whole transactional idea has got to go. It’s got to go not because it’s weak, but because it is an illusion.
God is over all and through all and in all. How can something have an exchange with something it’s part of? Will the part trade the whole? In accounting we called that intercompany activity, and it is just funny money. No profit. And there is no profit in love. It doesn't work that way.
There’s this bogus hymn that I used to sing somewhere (there are probably many that are similar) that goes like this:
I love the Lord, He has been so good to me
He bled and died, from sin to set me free
No greater gift than this could ever be-eeeeee
I love the Lord because he first loved me
And there’s another just like it:
O how I love Jesus!
And O how I love Jesus!
O how I love Jesus
Because He first loved me!
I think God wants to vomit when people sing those songs. Because it gives this awful message: if you’ll be a good God and be faithful to me and bless me and keep me and love me, then you can be my God and I’ll pay you back. It’s as if we took a page right out of Jacob’s manual:
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” (Genesis 28)
How pathetic. This is NOT how God sees us, and I note that God never answered Jacob. Never spoke to him for a long time after that. I wonder what He was thinking.
I think John understood God much better when he wrote these words:
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4)
It’s not: We love God because he loved us. It’s: We love because God loved us. It’s like we received it from him not to owe him back but we carry his love in us freely. NOT I love God back because he loved me first. Because then if He doesn’t love me, isn’t faithful to me, doesn’t seem like He’s really good, doesn’t bless me, etc., etc., etc. then I really won’t love him. And of course if we would treat God this way then we would treat His children (all people) this way, too.
And it even goes further than this. We are love in the same way that God is love. Unless we're still doing the transaction thing.
So back to what I was saying, it’s not bad because it’s a pathetic attempt to earn God’s love. It’s bad because it’s an illusion. There is no separation between God and us and his love. God’s love is everywhere, it is all around, because God is love, and because God is over all and through all and in all. It is inescapable. The only thing I can do is to refuse God’s love. And one of the best ways, ONE OF THE BEST WAYS to refuse God’s love is to try to earn it. The only thing it can mean if I am trying to earn his love is that I am holding something back intentionally from the love that is over all and through all and in all.
Nobody, not even John or anyone in the Bible, said it better for me than Barlow Girl:
Why, why are You still here with me?
Didn't You see what I've done?
In my shame I want to run and hide myself
But it's here I see the truth
I don't deserve You
But I need You to love me, and I
I won't keep my heart from You this time
And I'll stop this pretending that I can
Somehow deserve what I already have
(I Need You to Love Me)
It's not that God loves me even though I don't deserve it. Not at all. The idea of deserving love has never crossed God's mind. God is love.
1 comment:
you know, so much (of America anyway) that is pounded to us is "if/then".
If you'll buy this beer, then girls will want to have sex with you.
If you'll buy this makeup or these clothes, men will find you desirable.
If you buy this product, your house will be safe or clean. Or happy. Or perfect.
If you accept Jesus into your heart...then you will be saved.
Yuck.
Double yuck.
But wait! Society says that God's love is not "if/then", it's "because".
Personally, I think any answer given which is "just because" is cheap.
Don't we all recall others or ourselves telling a child "just because" to a question they've asked?
Even if that question is at the end of a series of "why" questions they ask (that we wax tired of answering at some point), I still think it's cheap.
I don't think 'just because' is a valid answer to anything.
And I likewise think that putting God's love (or anything else about Him) into the 'just because' category is cheap.
In the case of talking about God's love, there is so much more to His love than "because".
To categorize God's love as "because" treats it like just another umpteen million theories in a science book or a kazillion historical facts in a history book.
And yet how many are content to speak of God's love like this. Could that be due to their intercourse with Him being likewise that shallow?
God bring the pain that drives us beyond theory. God bring the trials that make us cling. God bring the suffering that leaves us no other option. THIS is when people will move beyond theory, beyond "just because", and beyond the conditional reciprocity you speak of so well in this post.
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