Are we loved?
Are we truly loved, with all our flaws and weaknesses?
The late renowned psychiatrist and author, Paul Tournier, made the comment that humans have two primary needs - to know they are loved and they belong.
Lady GaGa sings, ‘I just want to be loved.’ A cry that emanates from every human heart.
It is sadly the case that many people’s human experience gives them the impression that they neither are loved nor belong.
It was in part the sense of belonging and temporary euphoria that Bill Wilson (founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) believed he experienced when drunk that led him to become an alcoholic. I am sure it is why some will turn to gangs today, to have a sense of belonging.
If we are fortunate enough to be born into a loving family, than much of that need will be met. But if not gaping wounds remain.
Furthermore, even the most together loving family, can not meet the deepest needs of any human heart. From the most loving of families come lives that search for more, come lives that self destruct for want of love.
Many Christians believe that God in the gospel of Jesus Christ meets this cry. They would argue that it is to this void in the human heart that comes a message full of grace, a message about a Creator who is head over heels in love with His/Her creation, who will stop at nothing, who will endure hell and back, out of love for every creature. That is the essence of the Christian story they claim. A love so amazing, so divine. A love that caused St Paul to write that it was ‘so deep and wide’, unfathomable (Ephesians 3:18-19). For St Paul, this love was supremely evidenced in the self sacrificial act of Christ laying down his life (Romans 5:8), even death on a scandalous cross (Philippians 2:8). He believed that this act of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, was not just for the cosmos but for him, so he declares, 'That the life I live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Galatians 2:20) Paul saw that this love although cosmic in scope (Colossians 1:20) was particular too. It was not just an overwhelming affection for all that was made, but also a particular love for each particular creature. It was this love that ‘compels’ Paul (2 Corinthians 2:15), that motivated him in his mission to proclaim Christ wherever and whenever he could.
Nevertheless, is this a valid reading of Scripture? Is the love of the Creator that is commonly preached about unconditional? Or are there conditions that must be met to be loved by God?
The Christian family is a diverse one. The three main groupings of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant can be further subdivided according to theological camps - for example, liberal or evangelical; conservative evagelical or Pentecostal/Charismatic. Within the Evangelical Protestant world there are those who are Arminian, following the lead of Jacobus Arminius with an emphasis on free will, and those who are Calvinist, following John Calvin who believe we are incapicated from choosing Christ and it is only a Sovereign work unrelated to our 'choice' that enables us to say 'yes' to God.
On the one hand most Christians (Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Arminian Protestants) would proclaim ‘yes’, God’s love is unconditional- Jesus Christ came and died for all including the worst of sinners; the extent of his unconditional love is revealed in his life laid down upon the cross. For the Calvinist, however, this unconditional love is only for the elect - this is a minority position in world Christianity, nevertheless, still an influential one particularly in some Protestant Evangelical circles.
I’ve heard some parts of the Evangelical Church say, ‘no God does not love all these people’, in fact he hates them, he is filled with wrath toward them, they are under the ‘wrath of God’ - understood as God’s personal hatred. Much of the infamous sermon, ‘sinners in the hands of an angry God’ by Jonathan Edwards is of this ilk. There are certainly Bible verses that you could bring out to support this perspective.
Some theologians have tried to explain how this wrath relates to the assertion made by John that ‘God is love’, a statement that declares that the very essence of God is agape ( this Greek word emphasising the self sacrificial costly love of God). They have contended that his wrath is an expression of His love.
This is a complex issue and I am very grateful that Brother John of Taize has attempted to wrestle with this theme in his book, ‘The Wrath of a loving God.’ Which I will return to in the course of these posts.
From all appearances often this Gospel message looks like it proclaims a conditional love. It is not love with no strings attached; there’s an almighty rope! As the late American comic, George Carlin puts it in his description of Christianity: ‘Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!
But He loves you.’
That is conditional love - pure and simple. We can try and fill it with all sorts of religious terminology to make it sound something other, but it comes to the same thing.
Some of these theologies appear to put God in a bad light - take the following Western Calvinist perspective, which I have caricatured - nevertheless, I think I am being fair in that caricutare:
(5 point Calvinism which I describe below is more accurately linked to his successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza - RT Kendall makes the case that John Calvin was in fact a four point Calvinist!)
We are born sick (Original sin) and headed for the incinerator (Hell) unless we accept the medicine the doctor has provided, yet we have a further problem our sickness makes us unwilling to embrace the medicine (Total depravity). However, luckily for some (Election) the doctor is willing to secretly inject you (Sovereign grace) so that you can fully embrace all the medicine needed and go to a glorious destination fit and well (heaven). Those who don’t get this medicine are left to deteriorate and become corpses. The doctor could, if he wanted, inject all people secretly, however, he does not do so as to show how kind he is to inject and save his chosen; they will realise how blessed they are as they see the fate that awaits those who were not fortunate enough to have been elected.
Instinctively this scheme appears terrible and if such a doctor in this world would do such a thing we may even call him wicked, and with good grounds. Yet this is often painted as glorious in relation to God....
Even though I am convinced that the Calvinist view of God has a lot of Scriptural warrant - there are a host of texts from the Bible one could collate to create their viewpoint - I believe it undermines the central Christian claims that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8) and that 'Christ died for all' (2 Corinthians 5:15), and therefore, ultimately it is found wanting. Furthermore, what is crystal clear is that a Calvinist vision of God does not depict God as having unconditional love toward all humanity; maybe to some, but not all.
The question remains are there good grounds for believing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ announces an unconditional love for humanity? Or is it conditional?
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