Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Love: what's it got to do with anything anyways?!

Philosophy cannot understand love. It’s irrational. It makes absolutely no sense. It does things that make other scratch their heads. One can only understand love if they have been in love.

Love drives people to sacrifice everything. Love keeps lovers up all night. Love would cause a college student to rent a car and drive 15 hours in order to get to spend 5 hours with the one he loves. Love makes people do things that others see and say, “that’s CRAZY!”

We can only understand God if we view him through the lens of love. The Bible is at its core a love story; God creates the world because of love; he looks to redeem his rebellious creation because of love; he calls out Israel because of his love; Christ comes to us because of love; he dies for us because of love; he creates the church because of love; he calls all to himself because of love. If we do not understand love, we do not understand God’s actions or the story of the Bible.

For this reason, theologians and philosophers who attempt to look at God’s actions through Christ a lens that doesn’t include love, miss the mark. For example, John Calvin created a model for understanding God’s working in the world – predestination – that makes sense philosophically yet it does not include love; thus it creates a poor understanding of who God is.

What do you think about this?

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