What if...
In grad school, one of our professors (okay, many, or at least... several did). He said "God is love."
I mean, I had heard this before.
But, he went on to say that God isn't the bringer of love, or the result of love, not the giver of love, or the sharer of love... God, he said, blowing my mind, IS love.
He said, imagine you are here, and your friend is in front of you. Imagine you love each other. God isn't behind you both, looking in at the center. The love you share doesn't conjure God, or reveal God. The love between you IS God.
I realized that this phrase, so hackneyed and trite, was really revolutionary. Life-shattering. Life-changing. God IS the love between me and... whoever. This... has implications.
If God is love, like... IS LOVE, then, whenever I am sharing love, I am sharing God, God's-self. When I am showing love, giving love, revealing love, I am sharing/showing/giving/revealing God. When I am loving, I am God-ing. I don't mean I am being a god. I mean, I am intimately and un-knottably entwined with God, I am doing what God does. Of course, when I am withholding love, denying love, refusing to love, the opposite is true. If God is love, and I am not loving, I am not working with God.
This aha moment also meant that I had to think differently about how God works.
I remember hearing a speaker at a confirmation retreat tell a heart-wrenching story about a child who had been so sick, dying... and how that child's family and community stormed heaven with prayers because this child needed a transplant. You guessed it, an organ became available, and the child lived. I remember thinking wryly, "too bad for that donor kid who obviously had less people praying for him."
I remember stopping by a lake on my way home from a bad ministry job, crying about how miserable I was, how bad this job was, why would God put me in such a miserable place? Answers, please!!
I remember being in a high school history class, the day after one of my youth group kids had committed suicide. The teacher was distraught, and had left the room, and there I was in Josh's seat, clueless youth minister wondering what to do. We talked about how Josh had been a pain in this class, always semi-tormenting the teacher, making everyone laugh. One boy turned to me, full-face, and said, so, if God does everything for a reason, what's the reason for Josh killing himself?
Good lord. I'd have a readier answer now. What I said was, "well, I don't know. Do you have an idea?" He said, well, here we all are in pain, maybe it's to teach us not to kill ourselves and put everyone through something like this. To me, that was about as good an answer as could be found in the moment, and everyone in the room nodded.
Knowing, now, that God is love, changes what I understand how God works. I think, now: if God IS love, then, what does love DO? Answer: love loves.
My friend Shannon, in college, said she believed that God created everything and everyone, but then sat back, sent us off to do our thing. We dubbed it Shannonism. And in a way, I think she's on to something. God created/creates, and gives free will. But what Shannonism neglected to notice was that God, even in God's sitting back, is loving.
What does God do when one child is dying and another has died? I think God loves them both; loves their families, the praying ones and whoever else there is. Does God put us in miserable jobs (even ministry ones)? I think God loved me through that very hard year, and when I found another, miserable-in-other-ways job, God loved me through that too. And when I found the happiest job, a couple of years after that, God loved me through that too. And, I think, God loved others through me in all those jobs.
Does God kill teenagers to teach other teenagers a lesson? I just... I can't believe it. This idea, that bad is used to effect good, doesn't square with the definition of God as love. Does love destroy one in order to build up another? I don't think anyone can say that with a straight face, although so many Christians I know work SO hard to believe it. No, I think God loved Josh through his devastation, loved his family and friends in their grief, loved that distraught teacher and all the adults in Josh's life who felt they'd let him down.
Love... loves. If we can't say something is true about Love, then we can't say it's true about God, even if it would make things SO much simpler.
Hearing that God is love, and working on a different understanding how God works, meant I had to think about prayer differently.
If God doesn't operate on a one-man-one-vote system, then why vote? When I pray for someone's healing, is my vote helpful? Is it effective? Is it even worth doing? This, to me, was and is the hardest part of understanding this mind-blowing thing of God being love. I couldn't, and can't, stop praying for people who I know are suffering, couldn't and can't stop praying in thanksgiving, couldn't and can't stop asking God to help me. And, as much as I don't think God needs my prayer to make up God's mind about anything, I do think God wants my prayer, because God loves me. In any relationship, it's a gift to share our burdens, joys, suffering, worries, victories with each other. We honor each other by sharing our selves with each other, and I am feeling more and more sure that this is what prayer is. God knows I suffer, knows I screw up, knows I feel joy, but I believe God loves to spend time with me, loves to hear from me, even though God already knows what I'm going to say.
I remember sitting on a train from Boston to Medford one evening after a Red Sox game. Most of the train car was empty, but across from me sat an older man in business clothes- in my memory, he's wearing a hat and long raincoat, and has a briefcase, but I'm not sure my mind didn't rewrite these details into this story. Anyway, what I do remember clearly is that this man looked tired. He was kind of slumped, and sleepy looking, and his face was bumpy and pock-marked and slack. And I loved him.
I don't know how to explain what happened in this moment except that I looked across the car at this stranger and loved him with all my heart. I hoped his life would be happy, I wanted more than anything in that moment for him to be happy. And I realized that this love between us, this love that the guy didn't even know existed, this love that was unearned, unrecognized, maybe even undeserved, was God. It felt like such an honor to be being God in that moment.
I wish I'd known about this in that history classroom, so I could say to those kids "I think God is so sad about Josh taking his own life. I think God is so sad that we are all in such pain. I think God wants us to be happy and okay, and is going to hang in here with us while we work to get there." I don't know if that would have helped anyone. Nadia Bolz-Webber says "There simply is no knowable answer to the question of why there is suffering. But there is meaning. And for me that meaning ended up being related to Jesus - Emmanual - which means 'God with us.'"
If God IS love... doesn't that change everything?
I mean, I had heard this before.
But, he went on to say that God isn't the bringer of love, or the result of love, not the giver of love, or the sharer of love... God, he said, blowing my mind, IS love.
He said, imagine you are here, and your friend is in front of you. Imagine you love each other. God isn't behind you both, looking in at the center. The love you share doesn't conjure God, or reveal God. The love between you IS God.
I realized that this phrase, so hackneyed and trite, was really revolutionary. Life-shattering. Life-changing. God IS the love between me and... whoever. This... has implications.
If God is love, like... IS LOVE, then, whenever I am sharing love, I am sharing God, God's-self. When I am showing love, giving love, revealing love, I am sharing/showing/giving/revealing God. When I am loving, I am God-ing. I don't mean I am being a god. I mean, I am intimately and un-knottably entwined with God, I am doing what God does. Of course, when I am withholding love, denying love, refusing to love, the opposite is true. If God is love, and I am not loving, I am not working with God.
This aha moment also meant that I had to think differently about how God works.
I remember hearing a speaker at a confirmation retreat tell a heart-wrenching story about a child who had been so sick, dying... and how that child's family and community stormed heaven with prayers because this child needed a transplant. You guessed it, an organ became available, and the child lived. I remember thinking wryly, "too bad for that donor kid who obviously had less people praying for him."
I remember stopping by a lake on my way home from a bad ministry job, crying about how miserable I was, how bad this job was, why would God put me in such a miserable place? Answers, please!!
I remember being in a high school history class, the day after one of my youth group kids had committed suicide. The teacher was distraught, and had left the room, and there I was in Josh's seat, clueless youth minister wondering what to do. We talked about how Josh had been a pain in this class, always semi-tormenting the teacher, making everyone laugh. One boy turned to me, full-face, and said, so, if God does everything for a reason, what's the reason for Josh killing himself?
Good lord. I'd have a readier answer now. What I said was, "well, I don't know. Do you have an idea?" He said, well, here we all are in pain, maybe it's to teach us not to kill ourselves and put everyone through something like this. To me, that was about as good an answer as could be found in the moment, and everyone in the room nodded.
Knowing, now, that God is love, changes what I understand how God works. I think, now: if God IS love, then, what does love DO? Answer: love loves.
My friend Shannon, in college, said she believed that God created everything and everyone, but then sat back, sent us off to do our thing. We dubbed it Shannonism. And in a way, I think she's on to something. God created/creates, and gives free will. But what Shannonism neglected to notice was that God, even in God's sitting back, is loving.
What does God do when one child is dying and another has died? I think God loves them both; loves their families, the praying ones and whoever else there is. Does God put us in miserable jobs (even ministry ones)? I think God loved me through that very hard year, and when I found another, miserable-in-other-ways job, God loved me through that too. And when I found the happiest job, a couple of years after that, God loved me through that too. And, I think, God loved others through me in all those jobs.
Does God kill teenagers to teach other teenagers a lesson? I just... I can't believe it. This idea, that bad is used to effect good, doesn't square with the definition of God as love. Does love destroy one in order to build up another? I don't think anyone can say that with a straight face, although so many Christians I know work SO hard to believe it. No, I think God loved Josh through his devastation, loved his family and friends in their grief, loved that distraught teacher and all the adults in Josh's life who felt they'd let him down.
Love... loves. If we can't say something is true about Love, then we can't say it's true about God, even if it would make things SO much simpler.
Hearing that God is love, and working on a different understanding how God works, meant I had to think about prayer differently.
If God doesn't operate on a one-man-one-vote system, then why vote? When I pray for someone's healing, is my vote helpful? Is it effective? Is it even worth doing? This, to me, was and is the hardest part of understanding this mind-blowing thing of God being love. I couldn't, and can't, stop praying for people who I know are suffering, couldn't and can't stop praying in thanksgiving, couldn't and can't stop asking God to help me. And, as much as I don't think God needs my prayer to make up God's mind about anything, I do think God wants my prayer, because God loves me. In any relationship, it's a gift to share our burdens, joys, suffering, worries, victories with each other. We honor each other by sharing our selves with each other, and I am feeling more and more sure that this is what prayer is. God knows I suffer, knows I screw up, knows I feel joy, but I believe God loves to spend time with me, loves to hear from me, even though God already knows what I'm going to say.
I remember sitting on a train from Boston to Medford one evening after a Red Sox game. Most of the train car was empty, but across from me sat an older man in business clothes- in my memory, he's wearing a hat and long raincoat, and has a briefcase, but I'm not sure my mind didn't rewrite these details into this story. Anyway, what I do remember clearly is that this man looked tired. He was kind of slumped, and sleepy looking, and his face was bumpy and pock-marked and slack. And I loved him.
I don't know how to explain what happened in this moment except that I looked across the car at this stranger and loved him with all my heart. I hoped his life would be happy, I wanted more than anything in that moment for him to be happy. And I realized that this love between us, this love that the guy didn't even know existed, this love that was unearned, unrecognized, maybe even undeserved, was God. It felt like such an honor to be being God in that moment.
I wish I'd known about this in that history classroom, so I could say to those kids "I think God is so sad about Josh taking his own life. I think God is so sad that we are all in such pain. I think God wants us to be happy and okay, and is going to hang in here with us while we work to get there." I don't know if that would have helped anyone. Nadia Bolz-Webber says "There simply is no knowable answer to the question of why there is suffering. But there is meaning. And for me that meaning ended up being related to Jesus - Emmanual - which means 'God with us.'"
If God IS love... doesn't that change everything?
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