500, Part 7: Should God Love as We Do?

There was a time when Christians began their thinking on a particular subject with what God had to say about it. The Scriptures were taken to be perspicuous, even to be of supernatural clarity. In our day, the Scriptures have become a riddle, decoded in the various acts of interpretation and thus subject to our lordship. We begin with how we think, how we feel and how we behave, and then superimpose such thinking/feeling/behaving back upon God. God has become a composite of our own deepest desires, a projection and extrapolation of our own egos. In those backward olden days they called this "idolatry," but we know it as "theological evolution." God, in all His wisdom, is keeping pace with us.

Perhaps the best example of this in our day is the matter of the "love of God." In the end, we assume that God must love as we do, or else He is not loving.

We reason from analogy here. For example, we say things like the following:

"If my child did X, I would still love him, just because he is mine."

"If I were God, then I would love and accept everyone."

"If I were God, I would never send my beloved children to hell."

"I would never create people for my own ego or glory."

"What I think God is saying there is..."

Now I understand why people do this, but surely we should question the wisdom of the assumption that God should think/feel/behave as we do. Perhaps it does not demonstrate the heights of wisdom to expect that God affirm human standards of love. People the world over have no problem doing all manner of strange things because they love... their families, their homeland, their way of life, their stuff, etc.

God's love differs from human love in at least the following significant ways:

1. We are God's rebel creation, not technically His "children." Jesus is His begotten, and we can become adopted children of God only in and through the merits of Christ.

Occasionally you hear a person suggest that God creates people to send them to hell, which is a ridiculous oversimplification of the theology of hell. This accusation carries with it an assumption of Pelagianism (ancient heresy that teaches that each soul is created sinless). Christian theology loudly proclaims that every infant is born in both imputed (credited) and actual sin (sin nature). Every time sinful human beings procreate, they generate new fallen, sinful human beings. God did not create this state of affairs. Human beings are responsible wholly for their stubborn willful rebellion against God.

It is obvious that human beings sense some organic connection to their biological children (well, most of them), and this natural affinity is surely not the same thing God feels towards the rebel race of mankind. Perhaps the analogy doesn't work because of the significant differences between natural offspring and natural affection and the relationship that a perfect being must have with His rebel creation.

2. Two sinful people moving towards each other, or merely standing next to each other, is not analogous to a holy God moving towards sinful human beings.

We carry with us this arrogant assumption that a totally pure and holy being would of course be smitten with us.

Does it ever occur to us what it would mean for the God of the universe, who is without moral defect, to value beings who hate everything He loves, and hate His holy character?

What does it require for a perfect God to move towards imperfect human beings? Perhaps the best answer to this question is that God cannot even move towards sinful human beings without His work on our behalf in Christ. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. (Eph 1:4-5)" 

God's movement towards sinful people is conditioned on His pledge to make them sinless, and we can only be sinless if we are found "in Christ." And we can only be found in Christ if God so imputes Christ's righteousness to us, regenerates us, justifies us and sanctifies us. The fact that this litany of terms is meaningless to unbelievers is no surprise; the fact that it is meaningless to so many believers is the reason we see such an entirely ambiguous theology of God's love in the Christian world today. 

To say that God's redemptive love towards his elect is in any way analogous to the love shared by two imperfect human beings, where natural preferences are motivated by any number of shared carnal interests, is a particularly troubling case of hubris. A company of sinners bound by the fraternal rationalization of sin is in no way remotely analogous to God's redeeming love in Christ for His people. 

The curious thing here is that there will perhaps still be fraternal love in hell (rebels sharing their appreciation and justification of other rebels), but there will also be misery in that love because it will not be a love for that which is holy. To suggest, therefore, that God's love should be like human love is foolishness at its zenith. 

3. You are not okay the way you are! And neither am I!

It is strange that people again expect God's love to look like a mere adjustment to the idiosyncrasies of human beings (their sinfulness). I think here of homosexuality. Again, the analogy is that parents will still "love" their gay children, so God should too.

But what if God's way of loving a gay person is not to "adjust" to him, but to make him whole in Christ? A parent who loves his gay son will probably love him best by proclaiming the glory of the gospel to him rather than adjusting to him. Surely patient tolerance of sinfulness in ourselves and in others is not to be equated with mere stagnancy and accomodationism.

If a parent really believes that his or her daughter is caught up in habitual destructive behavior, then it says nothing of his or her love to merely "accept" this state of affairs.

And so this is the day and age of the narcissist, complete with her set of idiosyncrasies. Everyone has them, but the narcissist is clear that she doesn't plan to change anytime soon. Anyone who wants a relationship with her will have to adjust to her, and that includes God! The universe will need to reorder itself around her, and this to her is what love looks like. And if God is a loving God, He will accept these conditions of relationship.

The curious thing about this understanding of love is that if God so leaves people in their miserable condition, and merely accepts them as they are, then He says two striking things: Firstly, He says that His perfect moral character can be bent to accommodate the imperfections of human beings--in other words, that He is not perfect. Secondly, He says that He can do nothing better with individuals than applaud them for what they already are--in other words, that He is sycophantic and impotent. He, the God of all creation, is left groping for the approval of the narcissist. In effect, He merely acknowledges that what looks like imperfection is in fact finished perfection. This strips Christianity of all of its merit and renders God nothing more than a grand projection of human self-love. God is the ultimate justification for whatever it is that we want to say or do. After all, He made us this way, and He "don't make junk."

So our culture has fashioned a god in it's own image, and it looks like the self-esteem anthem of a pop princess. So rest knowing that this god says everything is fine and you are perfect the way you are! He says this because He loves you. And it turns out that His love is no different than yours.