God is Love

Lunch conversation with a friend.

"God is love," I said.

"1 John 4:8. I believe it," he replied.

"So if God is love," I said, "then loving someone is giving them an encounter with Him."

"Well yeah, I believe that to a certain extent, I guess," he replied.

"What do you mean?"

     "Well, that will only go so far. Eventually you have to witness to them about Jesus, or they may never get it."

"Get what?"

"That he loves them and died for their sins."

"Huh. I wonder why that is."

"What do you mean?"

"Ok, so God is love, right?"

"Yeah."

"Love isn't something God has. Love is what He is."

"Yeah. Yeah I guess so."

"So loving someone, or giving them an encounter with love, is giving them an encounter with God."

     "Yeah," he said, "but if you don't tell them about Jesus, then they may think that you're showing them love in the name of Buddha or Mohammad or some other god. They may never understand that Jesus is the source of your love."

"Why do you think that?"

     "Well...I don't know. I guess telling people about Jesus is really loving them. If you really loved them, you would tell them about Jesus."

"You mean that's all you should do?"

"What do you mean?"

     "There's a guy I see on a regular basis that I know doesn't know Jesus. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to have anything to do with God. He is a war vet, one of those guys that has seen so much death and pain that he doesn't believe that a God exists, or if a God did exist, he's just mean and hates people. I don't think he has access to a shower or a bath. He might be homeless, but he might just not be able to pay the water bill. He's pretty poor. I'm not sure how often he eats."

"What's your point?"

     "What I mean is, should I tell the guy about Jesus and leave it at that, or should I give him some food, let him use my shower and my washing machine, and giving him some money to get his water turned back on?"

     "Well if he's opposed to Jesus then letting him use your stuff or giving him money isn't really going to help with anything. It certainly isn't going to change his mind about God."

"Why not?" I asked.

     "I don't know. Usually, people like that are just too set in their ways. But you still haven't addressed what I asked you earlier."

"What?"

"Even if you let him use your stuff, and 'loved' him, how would he know that you're not a buddhist?"

"Well, because Buddha isn't love. God is love."

"Yeah, but how does that war vet know that?"

"Does he have to know that?"

"Well of course he does!"

"Why?"

"Because he might think that you are doing it in the name of Buddha or whoever else but Jesus."

"Ok, but isn't the God of the Bible the only God that is love?"

"Jeez, yes, yes He is the only one that is love, but you're missing my point!"

"What is your point?"

"My point is that he might become a Buddhist if you are kind to him but don't tell him that the reason you are kind to him is because of Jesus."

"Well, I disagree with you."

"Of course you do, but you're not giving me any good reasons why you disagree with me."

     "Well, do you think there are any Buddhists, muslims, or even atheists showing this guy real love right now? If they were, do you think he'd be going without food and showers?"

     "Well, no he'd probably get a shower every now and then, but no one could keep up that kind of care for a person. That's just too hard...hey our food is coming."

"Oh cool, I'm starving. Ok, but would real love keep it up? Wouldn't real love keep caring for this guy?"

"That's not fair. You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of someone else."

     "I'm not arguing that point. You have to be able to help someone before you can help someone. That's obvious...I'll just flat tell you what I think: I think that the God of the Bible is love. So, loving someone is giving them an encounter with the God of the Bible. No other God is love. What people think my motive for loving them is is irrelevant. At the end of the day, I believe the truth is that the God of the Bible is the only God who is love. You know why this guy hates God? Because He's not convinced that God is love. He's convinced that God is mean, cruel, and causes death and destruction for pleasure, or to teach people lessons. He's convinced that God is something that He's not.
     Oh hang on a second, Ma'am, I didn't get my other burger and fries, can you bring that quick in a to-go-box? I gotta get back to work. Oh, don't forget the pickles."

"Is that for dinner?"

     "Ha, yeah. Ok, we live in a Bible belt town. You really think that guy hasn't heard about Jesus on a daily basis from church goers who pass by him on the way to wherever they are going? But he doesn't want anything to do with God, because He's not seeing love from these people. He's just getting words: words that claim the opposite of his experience of what he thinks is God. No amount  of words or clever reasoning is going to change this man, or his view toward God. You know the only thing that can? An actual encounter with the God who is love. And how can we give him that encounter? Showing him love. Plain and simple.
     See, I believe that God is love. And I also believe what the Bible says about love: Love never fails. I believe that with each encounter with love, his worldview is changing. It's changing from a view that only sees death and destruction to one that sees the beauty of love and how high it is. I think that this guy...Oh, thanks, ma'am, that was quick.
     I think that this guy is changing on the inside, where no one can see. And one day, this war vet is going to realize that this wonderful thing called love that he's been experiencing is actually Jesus."

"You're talking like you know this guy is experiencing this 'love' already."

"Come on, I have to make a pit stop before I go back to work."

.......

"Where are we going?"

.......

"Dude, I've never been here before."

"You can stay in the car if you want."

"No, I think I'll come with you."

.......

"Hey, Jack, they actually put pickles on your burger this time, can you believe it?"

"No shit? It's about damn time they did it right."

"Yeah man. Hey I don't get off work till 6:30 today, that ok?"

"You kidding? Of course. I'm just glad you let me come over at all."

"Yeah, well, don't worry about it. I'll see you tonight?"

"Yep."

"Alright, I gotta get back to work."

"Wait, who is your friend?"

"Oh, this is a friend from my church."

"Your church?! You go to church?!"

"Ha, yeah, Jack, I do."

"Well I woulda never guessed."

"Ha, just be at my house, 6:45."

"Yeah...yeah I will. Thanks again."

"Alright, see ya later."

.......

"That's crazy."

"What's crazy?"

"That you never told him till now that you went to church."

"You don't think it's crazier that he said he never would have guessed I went to church?! I've been feeding him and letting him use my shower for the past 8 months. It's expensive, and my shower is gross. But that is a human being sitting on the ground over there. Love isn't telling him how Jesus can get him out of the dumps and into a nice clean apartment. Love is taking him out of the dump and letting him use my nice clean apartment until he realizes that he's been experiencing Jesus this whole time."

"It just takes so much time. Crusades and conferences get thousands of people saved in one night! You're spending all this time on one guy. It just seems inefficient."

"Alright, Mr. Trump."

"I'm just saying."

"Yeah, you're just saying. That's the problem."

.......

"Lunch tomorrow?"

"Yup."

"See ya."

"Peace."

impossibly good

tonight was a normal night. almost.

my wife and i are doing the p90x program. it's legit. my body hurts all over. as tony horton says in the ab ripper x portion, "i hate it, but i love it." afterward, i usually head for the fridge and find the biggest piece of meat i can find. i hear protein is good for muscle building. but tonight, i just wasn't hungry.

i even went to a cook-out/dance-party that my church was having in the street downtown after the workout. there were all kinds of delicious foods, including the blackened hotdogs that i love so much. but i just wasn't hungry. it wasn't not feeling hungry that puzzled me. i felt full, like i had just eaten a great meal. as i sometimes do, i asked god, "why am i not hungry? i should be starving." no answer.

i came home and started talking with a housemate, and the conversation, somehow, veered toward the unforgivable sin. i told her about a conversation i had with a coworker who didn't believe that god moved in "signs and wonders" anymore. i told him just a few experiences that my dance-party church have had in the past few years. i told him about how our pastor had his hand on a man's baseball-sized stomach tumor, asked god to touch him, and the tumor disolved in his hand. i told him about a little boy in our church who was born deaf, about the baby hearing aids that were made for him because he would never hear anything, and about how when the church prayed for him, he could hear everything.

as i talked to the man, he got angry.

"that's not god," he said. "that's being done by the power of the devil."

at first i was shocked when he said that. then i remembered a passage of scripture i read about the pharisees saying the same thing about jesus. matthew 12:22-24.

²²  Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. ²³  And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” ²⁴ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”

i wasn't familiar with what came after that in verses 30-32, but when i read it, i welled up with sadness.

Jesus says:

^"30  Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. ³¹  Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. ³² And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."


then the lights came on. that jolt of lightning--the one you feel when the teacher unexpectedly calls you up to the board in class--went through my body, and i actually got scared. for years i thought that blasphemy against the holy spirit was saying a certain combination of words against the holy spirit that made god so angry that he wouldn't forgive it. in context, though, that's not what jesus is saying. at all.




he's casting out demons and healing people by the power of the holy spirit (the same one that lives in us, by the way) and the pharisees genuinely think it's the devil. they think god is the devil. what? i had to read it again. (hint hint, you should, too.)


yes, they think god is the devil.


but why is that unforgivable?


well, ask yourself: why would any sane person want anything to do with the devil? why would you want to be healed by the power of the devil? why would you want the power of the devil in you at all? why would you approach the devil for forgiveness of sin? for everlasting life? a sane person wouldn't. a sane person would be opposed to the power of the devil, and the man who operates in it.

that's why jesus said it's unforgivable: not because he is fuming angry and refuses to forgive, but because the one who believes he is the devil will never ask for forgiveness from him. and these guys believed so fervently that jesus was operating in the power of the devil that they ended up killing him.

i wrestled with this for over a year. is this man (the one who told me that the miracles i had seen were by the power of the devil) unforgivable? there has to be hope for him. there has to be. i know that god prefers mercy over judgement. i know that he is love. he doesn't just have love, he is love. can love wake this man up? in the state he's in? 


i would stay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, begging god to show up to him. but even if god did show up to this man, he would recognize god as the devil, and just think that satan visited him. right?

eventually, life happened, and i stopped thinking about it. fickle, i know. it just weighed on me so heavily that i couldn't think about it anymore. that a man is doomed. that with all my reasoning and pressing in, i couldn't work out how he could ever experience the holy spirit for who he really is. it's a man's soul we're talking about, not a $2 cheeseburger you accidentally dropped on the ground. you can't just go buy another one.

fast forward.

tonight, when i got home, he came to mind again. "i know there is always hope. i don't know how, but i know there is hope for him." then i realized. 

paul was a pharisee.

paul wasn't just any pharisee. paul (saul at this point) was killing christians, and thought he was doing god a favor by doing so. just like the pharisees who killed jesus, saul was killing anyone saying they followed the man who claimed to be the son of god, but was actually sent from satan. like the other pharisees, saul thought jesus did what he did by the power of the devil. and he was carrying on what his brothers started: ridding the world of this satanic power by killing those who were possessed by it. he had set in his heart, and said with his mouth, and decreed with execution orders that jesus was from the devil: the same thing his brothers did in matthew 12.

saul had committed the unforgivable sin.

. . .

enter the risen lord, made of love and light!

. . .

jesus shows up to saul (on his way to kill more christians). but jesus does the impossible. 

he forgives saul the unforgivable sin.

my mind exploded.

it gets even better.

saul gets a new name--paul--and is given the task of planting and teaching the bride of christ throughout the known world. saul becomes the apostle paul, the scripture writer, the teacher, the missionary.

so not only does jesus forgive what he says is unforgivable, he also gives love, power, and mission in place of hate and blindness to who god really is (knocking the scales off of paul's eyes wasn't just for show).

god is love. god's mercy always triumphs over his judgement. god forgives even what he decides is unforgivable. a love that trumps even it's own wrath. he's infinitely good. quite literally, impossibly good.

it's why the scripture never says "god is judgement."

it's why the scripture never says "god is anger."

it's why the scripture never says "god is hate."

"god is love."

we are never without hope.