If you had to boil the Christian faith down into a single, short statement capturing its essence, the most important thing about it, the fundamental core without which Christianity is no different from any other religion, what would you say?
You could talk about God’s immutability, His justice, or all of His “omni” qualities (omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience). But ultimately, if you really want to get to the nub of what it is about God that absolutely defines Him beyond any other characteristic, you have to go with the Apostle John:
Time for a personal confession: I have a problem with God’s love.
I have no difficulty affirming that God is love. I believe He is loving in a way that goes beyond my ability to conceive or measure. I even believe He loves me beyond what I imagine or deserve.
This is all fine and dandy, and as long as it’s out there as abstract knowledge, I have no issue whatsoever with it.
But that’s exactly the problem: God’s love is not some ethereal concept that can be analysed, quantised and understood at a distance. Just as the only way you can experience what the hide of an elephant actually feels like is to touch it with your bare hands, the only way you can know what it means that God is love is to experience His love in the deep, real, raw places of your soul. But this means letting down your defences and allowing who God is to get past all of the accumulated layers of misinformation, hurt and shame that are constantly reminding you how the world really is and just how unworthy you really are.
So this is my problem with God’s love: I can understand and accept it in my mind, but allowing it to seep and soak into my heart is a whole other ball game.
Even when God manages to get me into a place where I finally begin to catch a glimpse of the reality of His love, I often derail the process by trying to find something to offer Him that is deserving of His love. I get it, God: you love me because I’m making an effort, because I’m doing my best, because in spite of all my weaknesses and my foul-ups I sometimes do things that please you.
This has long been a source of frustration for me: knowing in my head that God loves me, period; desperately wanting the full reality of that knowledge to flood my heart and soul; but unable to find a way to make that journey from head to heart happen.
I have recently felt this begin to change. My heart has begun to be stirred in fresh ways. Central to this has been an overhaul of my entire conception of God: the revelation that God is not an angry God who could only forgive me by first pouring out His wrath on an innocent victim in the form of His Son, but that He is, after all, an infinitely merciful God who forgives and lavishes compassion on His enemies, not because satisfaction has been made through an appropriate sacrifice but because – wait for it – He is love.
I can’t begin to describe how much of a world-tilting, paradigm-shifting revelation this has been for me. I feel as though, after all these years, I’m finally beginning to understand why I’ve found it so very hard to dare to allow God’s love to penetrate my heart. I know at last what it is that has held me back. At some level, believing God to be a legally exacting God whose justice had to be satisfied by sacrifice, I feared that I would not make the grade, that I would prove unworthy.
I may still have a long way to go, but today I have fresh hope that I am not cut off from the vast, deep ocean of God’s love, either in objective fact or in subjective experience. I feel as though, having stood on the shore and contemplated the ocean for a long time, I’ve finally rolled up my trousers and begun to paddle in the shallows, to feel the cool, soothing water rippling between my toes. Deeper waters invite, and in time I’ll hopefully find the courage to swim out.
Earlier today I was chatting with a friend about this issue of our difficulty in truly accepting God’s love. My friend told me he had recently been talking with God when a picture came to mind that really impacted him. In this picture, the Father gave him a big hug and held him. My friend recalled that he struggled to accept the Father’s affectionate, accepting embrace. Even as the Father held him, my friend took out a knife and stabbed the Father in the chest. In response, the Father simply held him and repeatedly said, “It’s okay, it’s okay my boy, I love you”. The Father wouldn’t let go even as my friend wounded and killed Him. He refused to defend himself or fight back.
As he recalled this picture, my friend said “I want to give in to it and believe it”. Doesn’t that just sum up what we find so difficult: something deep in our hearts instinctively responds to God’s word of love and acceptance, but all our layers of shame, fear and wrong thinking try to hijack the truth before it can sink deep into our souls and set us free.
But I know this: God is patient and will get us there if we let Him. That’s what I’m holding out my hope for. If anyone or anything can soften my hard heart and peel away the toxic shell I’ve worked so hard to construct around it, it’s the God who is all-surpassing, all-embracing, all-forgiving love.
To finish, I’d like to share a movie clip that immediately came to mind as my friend told me about his picture of the Father embracing him and telling him over and over that He loved him. It’s from the film Good Will Hunting. Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, is a messed-up young guy from an abusive background who, with the help of a therapist (Robin Williams), begins to break off his chains and move towards a life of freedom. You and I are Will Hunting, and the Robin Williams character is the Father, desperate to help us know the truth, so that it might set us free.
[ Image: Nathan Rupert ]
