Friday, May 15, 2009

God is Love

Easter 5 year B
I John 4:7-21
God is Love
By Rich Gamble


God is love. It sounds like something that should be on a bad Hallmark Greeting Card. But when we say God is love we are saying the most radical thing about the nature of the reality that can be said.

We are the children of the winners in the struggle for resources among human beings. Our ancestors were the ones who were able to win the competition for resources. They won because they were the best at utilizing the power of domination. Our ancestors out traded, out organized, and more successfully utilized violence more effectively than other peoples. The power of domination is the foundation upon which our civilization is built.

So it makes sense that our ancestors would naturally perceive domination as the undeniable aspect of power and they would see God as the very embodiment of that power. Because of our history, we think of God in a certain way, or perhaps because our ancestors thought of God in a certain way they came to dominate history. Either way we end up in the same place. When most people in our world talk of God they are speaking in terms of domination.

Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? The question presupposes that God has the power to control human destiny. But what if God doesn’t have that power? Some people would say that such power is the very definition of God.

On the news the other night, a bystander to an auto accident gave God the credit for the fact that no one was seriously injured. But to think in such ways about God is to also give God the blame when people are injured or killed, or struck down by misfortune. Those who believe in God as dominator want to give God the power to determine each element in our existence which makes sense if God is the ultimate source of that kind of power. People prosper because God wills it, people suffer and die because God wills it. And someday we will come to understand the great mystery of such actions.

But if God is agape love, then maybe God isn’t in control of our destiny. To those who think of God as dominator, to say that God isn’t in control is to say that God isn’t God, or that God is weak or less than what God should be. But if God is self giving love (which is the kind of love John talks about here using the Greek work agape) if God is agape, then the typical ways of thinking about God and power are all wrong.

Another way to think about it is in the metaphor of the parent child relationship, which the Bible uses often. The traditional way of thinking of God is in the relationship of a parent to a small child. With a small child the parent controls the child and manages the world around the child. In a healthy parent/child relationship, the parent disciplines the child, protects the child from harm, and provides for all the needs of the child. The parent controls all of these aspects of the child’s life so that the child will be safe and grow up to be a healthy adult. The parent dominates the child’s life but does so for good reasons.

But in a relationship between a parent and an adult child, the same behaviors would be seen as unhealthy. If the parent watches over the adult child as they would a toddler then their actions could be seen as harmful to the adult child. In a healthy relationship between a parent and an adult child there is no power to force the child to behave in a certain manner and even if the parent had that power, it would diminish the adult child’s freedom to choose and learn and mature.

Adult children make mistakes that their parents could have prevented but the price for that level of control is to keep the adult child from maturing.

Parents of adult children don’t have the power to make their children live their lives in certain ways, and even if they do have that power, it would be wrong to use it. Parent’s of adult children can set a good example, they can warn, they can hope but they cannot force their child to act in the way they would have them act.

A God that is agape, cannot force humanity to act in a certain way, because force is outside the nature of agape. God as agape is not in control of human destiny. God as agape can hope for us, can inspire us, and can support us with loving acceptance. But God as agape cannot, would not control our lives. God as agape cannot, would not punish us with suffering here or in the afterlife.

If the foundational aspect of universal reality (which we imply when we talk about God) is agape, then our notions of social reality change as well. Last week we saw this in terms of economics. John points out that if someone has the world’s goods and sees their brother or sister in need and does not share, they are not manifesting the truth and power of God.

This week John points out that to see God as agape is to do away with fear and hate.

Our nation’s economic system is built on greed. Our nation’s criminal justice system is built on instilling fear of prison in people. Our nation’s military is there to instill fear in other nations who would oppose us. If God is a dominator then these systems make sense. If God is agape, then they stand in contradiction to the power of God.

If God is agape, then the world may well be in our hands, to cherish or destroy. We have tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and we have left the garden of our childhood. We are adult children of a God that is love. It is up to us whether we act in ways which honors God by using the power of love, to create a more loving world or act in ways which reflects the power of domination.

Julia Ward Howe, wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic to inspire the soldiers of the Union army. It was published in 1862. In the hymn she links the will of God to the cause of the army of the Union.

After the war, she had second thoughts about war as a tool for social change. She began to think differently about power and perhaps about the very nature of God. Rather than seeing power as being in the hands of men using the power of domination, she began to call on women to utilize the power of love.

She is seen as one of the founders of the idea of Mother’s Day, which to her, was a day for women to chart a different course for human history. She outlines that direction in her Mother’s Day proclamation written in 1870.

Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
Arise then...women of this day!Arise, all women who have hearts!Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,For caresses and applause.Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearnAll that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.We, the women of one country,Will be too tender of those of another countryTo allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up withOur own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."Blood does not wipe out dishonor,Nor violence indicate possession.As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvilAt the summons of war,Let women now leave all that may be left of homeFor a great and earnest day of counsel.Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the meansWhereby the great human family can live in peace...Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,But of God -In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly askThat a general congress of women without limit of nationality,May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenientAnd the earliest period consistent with its objects,To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,The amicable settlement of international questions,The great and general interests of peace.


To think of God as agape love is to think of God in radically new ways. To think of God as agape is to think of our lives, and communities and power in radically new ways.

God as love, implies that God won’t step in and fix all of the things we have messed up.

God as love gives us the power (love) and the vision we need to live our lives as reflections of that love.

God as love speaks to the hope that the power of love has the ability to overcome fear and hate and greed to create with God a paradise of purpose and plenty.

And that is good news.

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