The Entire Thought

Love is God

John keeps saying that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) But we qualify that definition, not quite trusting love. We say: God is love, but also powerful and just. We say God loves you — but God demands strict obedience and God will punish you and even let you be damned forever.
We think we can let God get away with this qualified, conditional love because God can do whatever God likes. Maybe God can, but can love do whatever it likes? Or is God not completely love, after all?
Let’s reduce this image of God/love to human terms. Let’s say that a father loves his son. But he makes him obey every arbitrary command and punishes him for every misdeed. The father forgives the son but also demands restitution. And if there are too many transgressions, the father practices “tough love" and disowns the son. And if the son gets killed in a drug-induced accident, the father is sorry, but believes that the son brought it on himself.
Most of us would understand the father’s good intention in disciplining the boy; we would accept the father’s insistence on paying for mistakes as a matter of justice; we would empathize with his frustration over multiple forgivings; we might even grudgingly accept the necessity of making the son fend for himself. But we would consider him less than a good father for his response to his son’s death, for letting their relationship ultimately be based on justice rather than on love. And if we judge him lacking as a loving father, why should we let our final destiny depend on God’s justice instead of God’s love?
Because we are afraid to love. We are happy to say that God is love, but fearful of saying that love is God. We are simply afraid to unleash the energy of love, even in God. Let’s face it: Love is risky, God is uncontrollable.
So we hedge God’s love in with safe doctrines. We know where that got us. A God first of power, then of love; a God first of justice, then of love; a God who forgives us only after we are sorry; a God who demands restitution instead of amnesty. And that leaves us fearing God more than loving God, obeying God more than loving God. We are servants of God rather than friends of God. Love on a leash makes us just what Jesus told us not to be.
We have separated God from love. We first believe in God and then try to believe that God does something called “love.” But that is not the real God. The real God does not do love; the real God is love. We can’t have one without the other. What do you suppose our creed would sound like if we actually believed in love? Maybe something like this: We believe in one love, the Father who in a gush of love created all things good. We believe in the Son of love, absolute love in human flesh, who was conceived by the Spirit of love in a virginal vessel of love.
We believe that love suffered all the way to death rather than give up on love. We believe that love survived the temporary power of death and came back more passionate than ever. We believe that that very same love continues on in us, the loving members of love’s body on earth. We finally believe that our love will be embraced by God’s love in an eternity of loving bliss. Amen.
If this is not our faith, if we cannot honestly pray these words, then something is drastically wrong.


Fr. James Smith
Celebration, May 10, 2009

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