Dear People                       Whom God Loves,

November 28, 2010

Dear People Whom God Loves,

God is Love - II

We ended last time with the question, If God cannot not love, if God cannot hate, does this mean that God is not free? And if God is not free, is God really loving us, because love is free…not forced or necessary?

To help engage this puzzle, we go back to our ancient and present day realization that we know God by analogy. What does this mean? We have images of God such as love and freedom. By analogy we say that God is like that image, that God is not like that image, and that God is way more than that image.

We know something about love from our human relationships. We also know that even though our loves are imperfect and that we can also hate, still love is a very positive thing. So it is a good image to point to God. That is why it is good to say: God is love.

When we remember the second part of analogy, we must also say that God is Love is not saying that God is like our human love. So we must be careful not to say that God is just a bigger version of human love.

Remembering the third part of analogy that God is way beyond what we mean by human love, we must acknowledge that we are in the presence of mystery. We are grateful and humbly grateful that we have some inkling of what the Love we name God is. That inkling can transform our lives. It is a gift beyond all measure. At the same time, we bow before that mystery and allow that Loving mystery to transform us-with all our imperfections-gradually and painfully to reflect more and more closely that Infinite Love from which we have come.

When we speak of God as being free, we must also remember that we know God only by analogy.

God is free. God is like our human freedom.
God is not like our human freedom.
God is way beyond any freedom that we have.

I have this fuzzy image of Infinite Love. That this Love is what God is. That this Love is the very nature of God. That this Love cannot not love is not the sign of a limitation, but because Infinite Love is the saturation of love-that is all that Love is-to only love is the ultimate freedom.

Next time we will look at what this means for us as a church.

Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay

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