Love Is What God Is

(Downy woodpecker in my backyard)

God is love. Love forms the very being of God.

"Love" is an essential attribute of God. Just as a triangle cannot not be three-sided, God cannot not-love.

Christian Trinitarian Theism best expresses this idea that God is love. In  this way.

1. God is a three-personed being. God is, essentially, a being-in-relationship.
2. God as Father-Son-Spirit makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love. This is because "love" is relational. "Love" requires an "other," an object to-be-loved.
3. So, in the very being of God there is a unity of otherness. Which allows for love.

God's essence is love. Just as an apple has appleness, God cannot not-love you. 

God does not love you because there is some command external to his being he must follow. God is love, therefore all God's thoughts and actions are loving.

God's love for you is genuine, 100% pure-squeezed love.

This means that when God thinks of you, he has a good feeling. God likes you. You are God's child, his son, or his daughter.

God made you, and what he has made God calls "very good."

You are deeply loved by God. Nothing can change this because God is love.

Love Is Produced in You As You Abide in Jesus

(Snow pine in my back yard)

As we abide in Christ, like a branch connected to a vine, whatever is in the vine enters into us. So the agape love of Jesus is produced in us. This is not something we produce ourselves. The Spirit does this. "Trying hard" to be fruit-bearing does not work and ends up leaving a lot of people feeling condemned. Because if I am not loving enough then it must be because I'm not trying harder and working harder at this Jesus thing. 

To understand this I recommend two things:

1. Re-read and re-meditate on John chapters 14-15-16.
2. Purchase and read Dallas Willard's Getting Love Right - only $1 for your Kindle!

Willard defines agape love as "an overall condition of the embodied, social self poised to promote the goods of human life that are within its range of influence. It is, then, a disposition or character (a second-level potentiality or potency, in Aristotelian terminology): a readiness to act in a certain way under certain conditions."

Thus understood, agape love "is not an action, nor a feeling or emotion, nor, indeed , an intention, as “intention” is ordinarily understood —though it gives rise to intentions and to actions of a certain type, and is associated with some “feelings” and resistant to others. It is this understanding of agape love as an overall disposition of the human self that , alone , does justice to the teachings of Jesus and Paul and the New Testament about love and gives us a coherent idea of love that can be aimed at in practice and implemented."

This is whole-being love, and is not something one turns on or off like a faucet. Willard rightly says the orientation of agape love is life as a whole. One becomes a loving person, rather than being a person who sometimes chooses to love and at other times doesn't. 

Willard writes:

"Paul understood the fallacy of those who say “I just can’t love so and so,” and there they stop and give up on love. He knew that they were working at the wrong level. They should not try to love that person but try to become the kind of person who would love them (emphasis mine). Only so can the ideal of love pass into a real possibility and practice. Our aim under love is not to be loving to this or that person, or in this or that kind of situation, but to be a person possessed by love as an overall character of life, whatever is or is not going on. The “occasions” are met with from that overall character. I do not come to my enemy and then try to love them, I come to them as a loving person. 

Love is not a faucet to be turned on or off at will. God himself doesn’t just love me or you, he is love. He is creative will for all that is good. That is his identity, and explains why he loves individuals, even when he is not pleased with them. We are directed by Paul to “be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us.” ( Eph. 5: 1-2) We are called and enabled to love as God loves." (Willard, op. cit., Kindle Locations 132-145)

God's great, boundless love cannot be self-manufactured. It is a production of the Spirit's forming us into greater and greater Christlikeness.

How to Communicate in Conflict

                                                                        (Ypsilanti, MI)

(Linda and I studied with David Augsburger in seminary. Here is one of the most important things God taught us through David.)

COMMUNICATION AS SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN LOVE (CARING + CONFRONTING; from David Augsburger, Caring Enough to Confront)

Ephesians 4:15 says: “therefore speak the truth in love; so shall we fully grow up into Christ.” Here we are told, in communication, to be both loving and truthful, caring and confronting.

Work at communicating both caring and confronting in the middle of marital or relational conflict.

Here are the attitudes to have and hold to.

SEE ALSO...

Be Slow to Anger - Three Tools for Communicating When in Conflict

How to Deal with Anger - Some Resources

Love Is Not an Entity to Be Worshiped

 

                                                              (Lake Erie, Monroe, MI)

For followers of Jesus, love is great. But love is not the greatest. First Corinthians 13 tells us that love is the greatest, among faith and hope. In the great triumvirate of faith, hope, and love, love takes first place.

As mighty as love is, love is not a thing. It is not a substance. It is not an entity. Love is not an object, nor is it a being, or a person. Therefore, love is not to be worshiped, since it is irrational to worship non-entities, be they physical or non-physical.

Love is a multi-faceted verb, manifesting itself in actions we call "loving," such as patience, kindness, gentleness, not easily angered, protective, trusting, and so on. While 1 Corinthians 13 appears to reify love, that's just a rhetorical device to elevate the behaviors associated with love. Love acts in certain ways, and does not act in certain other ways.

When the Bible says God is love, it is telling us that love is an essential attribute of the being of God. As an attribute of God, love is not to be worshiped. We don't worship attributes. Let's say, for example, that one of my attributes is weighs 170 pounds. (I wish this was true!) While weighs 170 pounds would be commendable, this attribute is not an entity or a substance which, in itself, is praiseworthy. We wouldn't expect someone, unless they are mentally incapacitated, to bow down and worship weighs 170 pounds.

Don't reify love. It's misleading, and false, to do that.

Don't bow before love and worship a verb.

Worship God who, in his being, is love.

Love Is Not the Greatest

 

                                                (Foggy Morning in Monroe County - 1/3/21)

(Some morning meditations on love...)

Is love great? Depending on your definition of love, yes.

Is love the greatest thing of all? No. Among the triad of faith, hope, and love, love wins. Love, biblical-style, is therefore greater than faith and hope. This does not say love is greater than all things. 1 Corinthians 13:13 reads - now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Note the words "of these."

Love is not greater than Christ. One day, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Christ, not love, is lord of all.

Aren't Christ and love the same thing? No. Christ is a person. Love is a quality, an attribute, like "red," in "This apple is red."

In 1 Corinthians 13 love is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit's grace. But, of course, love is not the Holy Spirit.

God is love. But love is not God. There is an asymmetric relationship between God and love. 

Love is not a being. God is. God is Supreme Being. Love is one of God's essential attributes. Love is an inexorable manifestation of the being of God.

Love has no ontological status. Love is not some entity that exists apart from persons. The reality of love depends on persons. The love of God can manifest through persons who are connected to Jesus.

Love is an expression of the being of God. But, again, this does not mean that love is God. 

For followers of Jesus like myself, what does love look like? Love looks like Jesus. Therefore, I study Jesus. In studying Jesus, in coming to know Christ, I come to know love as He is love.

One result of studying and knowing Jesus is seeing that, throughout and to the cross, Jesus hates sin, and calls us to repentance. This, also, is love. Romans 2:4 says, Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? (NLT)

Out of the heart of Jesus come words like, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near! (John 4:16) Because it is not loving to coddle sin.  

This, in my mind, is where some Christian writers fail me. To me, they elevate love above Christ and, as a result, diminish both. One cannot simultaneously embrace Christ and sin and label it "love." To do this is to commit the sin of over-affirmation.

Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.

Worship Christ, not love. And in this way, know what love is.

LOVE IN AN AGE OF OUTRAGE VIDEO

To Love Is Not to Agree

                                                      (Custer airport tower, across from our home.)

To disagree is not to hate.

Flipping this around, to love is not to agree.

Negate these two statements and we have something sounding like Orwell's "Ministry of Love."

DISAGREEMENT IS HATRED

LOVING IS AGREEMENT

Resist these untruths. You will then be swimming against the flow. If loving was equivalent to agreement, then no one would love anyone.

As clear as this is, few live these things out. And that is at the heart of political tribes (see esp. Amy Chua) and identity politics (see esp. Jonathan Haidt). 

This is soft totalitarianism (see Rod Dreher), akin to Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" in 1984. Which simply declared, expecting no resistance:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Marriage Counseling Material

My wildflower garden

A friend asked this question: "Do you have any marriage counseling material that you can share with me?"

Here are some things we recommend. 


ONLINE RESOURCES

I use the FOCCUS materials for marital and premarital counseling. 

startmarriageright.com - This is Gary Chapman's excellent website.



BOOKS

Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Got Married, by Gary Chapman

Linda and I read this after almost 40 years of marriage and still enjoyed it.

One More Try: What to Do When Your Marriage is Falling Apart, by Gary Chapman. 

For anyone who has given up on their marriage.

Loving Your Spouse When You Feel Like Walking Away; Real Help for Desperate Hearts in Difficult Marriages, by Gary Chapman.

Real Relationships: From Bad to Better and Good to Great, by Les and Leslie Parrott

Marital and premarital couples will benefit from this excellent book.

Hope-Focused Marriage Counseling: A Guide to Brief Therapy, by Everett Worthington   

Linda and are reading this book together. It's more academic, and for marital counselors. Very good!

Torn Asunder: Recovering From an Extramarital Affair, by Dave Carder

This is the book Linda and I recommend for people who have experienced this.

Caring enough to Confront: How to Understand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Toward Others, by David Augsburger

Linda and I have used this book so much in marital and relationship counseling that we should be getting royalties from it. On how to communicate in the midst of conflict.

The Forgiving Life: A Pathway to Overcoming Resentment and Creating a Legacy of Love, by Robert Enright

For Linda and I the key to a healthy marriage is: confession and forgiveness. In this book University of Wisconsin psychologist Enright shows us the relational power of forgiveness, in stories and empirical research.

The Mystery of Marriage, by Mike Mason

The most beautiful exaltation of marriage ever written?

I Married You, and I Loved a Girl, by Walter Trobisch

These two beautiful books were recommended to Linda and I before we got married.



LINKS TO THINGS I'VE WRITTEN

Your Marriage Can Be Saved (Especially for Husbands)

A Wedding Is a Welding

How to Save Your Failing Marriage

28 Danger Signs for the Not Yet Married

Dealing With Anger In Relationships

Using Logic to Manage Anger in Relationships

Your Marriage Represents Christ and the Church

Want to Be Married? Prepare for Conflict!

One Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

Another Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

A Third Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage

A Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage: #4

A Simple Secret to a Healthy Marriage - #5

Where God's Love Is, Self-Hatred Is Not

(Bolles Harbor, Monroe)

I have met people who have hated themselves. They see themselves as worthless. 

This includes Christians. 

Self-hatred is one side of a coin, the other being self-love (as a form of pride). Self-love thinks, “I am really something (in the sense of being better than others).” Self-hatred is a form of shame which thinks, “I am really nothing.” Both are forms of self-obsession. Both are cancerous viewpoints that harm spiritual formation and maturity.

I have personal experience in self-hatred. I have, at times, thought of myself as worthless. This is not a good place to be. It’s painful to beat on oneself. It feels more painful than having others hate me. How can this be overcome? 

Thomas Merton writes: "How are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? The reason why we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly, or openly, hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God."[1]

Here is a solution to self-hatred: Be at peace with God, and you will be at peace with self. Love God, and you will love self. 

This leads to the experience where, instead of flagellating yourself for faults and failures, you rejoice in the greater purposes of God manifested in them. Dom Augustin Guillerand said, "God will know how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity."[2]

To be free of self-hatred, know the love of God. 

Know that God loves you, that your worth is not the same as your usefulness, and your being-loved is not related to your failures and accomplishments. This brings a life of freedom. 

The more I dwell deeply in the presence of God, like a branch attached to Jesus the Vine, the more I hear God’s voice telling saying, “John, I love you.” In that reality, self-hatred withers, and perishes. 

[1] Thomas Merton, The Living Bread; in Through the Year With Thomas Merton, p. 66.
[2] Dom Augustin Guillerand, in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 208.

The best book on overcoming self-hatred is by Everett Worthington, Moving Forward: Six Steps to Forgiving Yourself and Moving Free from the Past.

***
My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Distinguishing Between Love and Desire

 

Monroe County

Dallas Willard, in Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, writes: 

"Love means will-to-good, willing the benefit of what or who is loved. We may say we love chocolate cake, but we don't. Rather, we want to eat it. That is desire, not love. In our culture we have a great problem distinguishing between love and desire, but it is essential that we do so." (K 810-18)

I've met with persons who interpret their sexual desire for their significant other as love. They view their partner as a treat to be consumed, like a piece of chocolate cake. 

Willard writes: "Agape love, perhaps the greatest contribution of Christ to human civilization, wills the good of whatever it is directed upon. It does not wish to consume it." (Ib.)