As I study a photo of my grandson, Bennet, reaching just over 10 months of life I am struck by the fact that all of life pivots around Divine Love. Because our available understanding of love is almost always conditioned on “I love you if” or “I love you when,” most people find it almost impossible—apart from real transformation—to comprehend or receive Divine Love. In fact, we cannot understand it in the least, unless we “stand under” it, like a cup beneath a waterfall. When we truly understand Divine Love, our politics, our anthropology, our economics, and our movements for justice will all change.
If we are to believe the biblical revelation, it seems that God does not love the people Israel if they change, but God loves them so that they can change. Divine Love is not a reward for good behavior, as we first presume it to be; it is a larger Life, an energy and movement that we can participate in—and then, almost in spite of ourselves—behave differently in. It seems few of us go there willingly. For some reason, we’re afraid of what we most want.
The prophet Hosea tells the people of Israel poetically and succinctly, “I will have pity on those who are not pitied, and I will say to those who are not my people, ‘You are my people,’ and they shall say, ‘You are my God’” Hosea 2:23. That is the divine pattern, although we almost always get it backwards. For some reason, we think that if we love God, God will love us. When, in reality, it is because God loves us that we can return the compliment. God does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good.
I strikes me that most people want to accept that logic to this day because it makes God and the world feel fair and just. Reward and retribution are in our hardwiring. They are the plot line for almost everything—except for the evolving biblical story, beginning with the Torah and evolving through the prophets.
During and after the exile, the prophets started seeing a clearly different pattern at work in God’s dealing with people. The new pattern looks like this: mistake –> consolation/salvation –> conversion. It is a total turnaround of consciousness! As Isaiah is able to hear from God, “The shame of your youth you shall forget… My love shall never fall away from you” Isaiah 54:4,10. It seems that inside the logic of God we discover the answer to failure is, in fact, more love!
God’s Love is the key to interpreting and understanding everything. Unloved people do bad things. Loved people do good things. It is that simple.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
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