Neal's Workshop

I concluded Meaningful Love with two questions. Below is my answer to the first. Armed with an understanding of love as a statement of value, supported by action, is the statement, "Jesus loves you," meaningful?

From what I can tell, Jesus and God do not love me. I’ve never been the recipient of any actions of love in any obvious or obscure way. Jesus and God have never had a conversation with me - this is despite voicing requests innumerate to have such conversations. I’ve never passed a test or gotten a promotion or won the lottery thanks to the assistance of the host of hosts or the man upstairs. Nothing has happened in my life to date that I can attribute to some supernatural force.

Should I be upset that God won't talk to me? Why won't he play basketball with me? Is God too good to share a cup of hot cocoa over a cool morning sunrise by my side? Perhaps I pissed God off. How? I don't know. I tried to make it work, but he was and is never there. I've shouted off cliffs for God to respond, and all I've ever heard in return was my echoing voice.

Since God refuses to interact with me in a manner consistent with my programming (programming supposedly written by God) as required by existing here in a material world (read: not supernatural), I have no choice but to conclude that God does not love me. I would further be so presumptuous to say that God doesn’t love you, either. If that is upsetting to hear, I apologize. However, if God does exists and he did create our existence, the historical record is pretty damning on his love for human beings. Or are all of the natural disasters and plagues the fault of mankind?

The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

Let’s break this love statement down.

God has created a means for us to be immortals, but his actions cost him his Son, Jesus. This statement is philosophically problematic. An omnipotent being does not have scarce resources that he must sacrifice. Why would God have to give anything up to give us something? If God gave something up, wouldn’t he cease to be God? And if God did make some exchange whereby we will benefit if we do x, y and z, why not be more direct about it instead of asking us to throw caution to the wind and believe statements written in a convoluted, contradictory document?

If God did love us so much why are we damned to eternal torment if we choose rational thought over faith? Furthermore, if you loved someone, would you send them to hell? When was the last time you made an ultimatum to someone you loved? I love you immensely, in fact some say I am love, but if you don’t believe in me (Despite having insufficient evidence to sustain such belief), you’re up shit creek. Too bad, so sad. I'm God and I make the rules.

Are these ideas coherent with any idea of love? They are clearly not coherent with love as a statement of value, supported by action.

Forgiveness is a cornerstone issue of the Christian faith. We have sinned and are beyond repair: Jesus fixed that problem. All you must do is request forgiveness (Note the inconsistency between the forgivness requirement and the belief requirement of John 3:16).

In relationships, if you wrong someone you love, you ask for their forgiveness. Assuming your actions were not too egregious and the wronged party believes he or she still has the capacity and will to love you, your forgiveness will come in short order.

You have to have wronged someone for their forgiveness to have meaning. How have you ever wronged God? Even choosing not to believe in God should not be an offense to God. If God had a heart to heart with me and then I adamantly continued believing that he did not exist, I could understand him being a little peeved. Otherwise, why should he be offended?

Furthermore, sinning doesn’t hurt God: a sin might hurt yourself or someone you love, but it doesn’t hurt God because it doesn’t impact God. Action is a two-way street. If you can’t interact with God (Talking to no one fails to constitute interaction), you can’t love God, either. You might say, "God hurts because you are his child: he hurts when you hurt." It makes for a nice soundbite, but if God really cared about my well being, he would talk to me, protect me from harm, and give me fatherly advice. As it is, if God is my figurative father, he should be asking for my forgiveness: he's the one who created me and then ran off for me to deal with the world on my own (Not that I mind, mind you, but you see my point).

Now you might say, “God is everywhere. He is in creation. By loving creation, I am loving God.” I see no problem with such an assertion (Although it begs the question, "Who created God? Super-God??"). Such a belief has important consequences: creation is the good and the bad. God is also behind the natural disasters, diseases, and non-human-based suffering, too. Or couldn't God have made it so we didn't suffer? What? Adam and Eve and original sin? I don't think so. God wouldn't be so arbitrary as to make all mankind suffer for the sins of one man and woman. And if he was so arbitrary, could you still respect him?

So God doesn’t love you, you can’t love him and statements about God loving us are meaningless. However, I think there are [at least] two Biblical passages about love that are potentially meaningful.

The first is referred to as one of the most important commandments, “To love your neighbor as yourself.” I see this scripture as the Biblical equivalent of the Golden Rule. Most people simply understand it to mean that you should love your neighbor. This clearly doesn’t make any sense. How can you love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself? You can’t. The statement hinges on the idea that you love yourself first. Secondly, if love requires action, not only can you not love everyone, but it doesn’t make sense to love everyone. Ponder this: if you could somehow donate your entire existence to others, how could you love yourself? Destroying the self is not an act of love.

The second potentially meaningful Biblical love-passage is, "God is love." My third, and final, part of Meaningful Love deals with the concept of God as love from an atypical angle: does love really make the world go ‘round? And if so, maybe God is love.