Questions from a young reader: What about God's love?
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post::You can read the start, and an explanation, of this short series here.::
Questioning God's love. I know God, I have experienced His presence, I know of His existence, I know of His power. Sometimes, though, I question His love. I had the idea pounded into me growing up that one should not live by their feelings, but sometimes, I can't help but lose grasp of the idea of God's love. I have a distinct head knowledge that He does, but you know...seeing is believing, and I am often a doubter.
You mentioned that you know God, you've experienced His presence, know of His existence, and know of his power. It is His love you question.
Love is difficult.
I sometimes think it should be easy, but it is the most important, the greatest of the three, and it is difficult to show it and see it and know it and understand it.
I have a struggle understanding love just in human terms. I have heard many sermons and teaching on God's love over the years, all the Greek definitions and explanations. From the same God comes love beyond love, that Jesus would die for us. But it is a love that allowed an only son to die. From the same God also comes wrath, discipline, anger, a mighty roaring voice, a faint whisper, years of silence, plague, salvation, light, healing, hope, death, misery, life, hope, mercy, grace, strength, and curses. What am I to even begin to do in trying to understand God?
I admit to questioning His love, even when I see, in hindsight, how He was right. I used to think in far simpler terms when I was growing up.
Love was always, and is always, expressed in human terms by humans, and I have come to realize that the love of God is an amazing, fearful thing. Trying to get a grasp on it is like holding a rock in your hand and saying that you know the earth. I sometimes don't understand His love. I sometimes feel hated or ignored. In moments I am afraid of God, only later to feel completely safe and at ease. But I won't let go of His hand, so to speak, because I absolutely trust Him. A paradox.
I think that our best efforts to understand God, aside from his Spirit revealing something directly to us, is through stories, art, analogies and symbolism. The Bible is full of these, and there is a reason for this. They give us a way to understand and to speak about a Being so far outside our realm (yet right here with us), a kind of language or way to see things from our lower, smaller angle. So, love gets talked around by noting what it feels like or where it is found, kind of like a prepositional phrase. Perhaps that is part of the confusion: we only know how to talk about love in part.
You also mentioned feeling torn between living by feelings and what you know. I often "preach" about making decisions based on what we know instead of feel, but I only do that to such a degree because I, too, go by feelings.
Feelings are real. They may lie, and not coincide with what we know, but they are real.
I don't want you to dismiss your feelings. I think of how the Bible says that Jesus wept when he heard his friend had died, when he saw how sad the people were in that moment. He knew he'd raise him from the dead, but his feelings were otherwise at that moment.
I suppose the problem is when love becomes a feeling and nothing more, whether that is in a human relationship or in our connection to God. I see, more and more, that love is not a feeling, but a doing. An action. I can show love if I don't feel it. Is that bad? Am I a hypocrite? Do I have to get my heart in perfect order for love before I can show it, or is it better to not wait for feelings to arrive and do it anyway?
Feelings are slow to arrive and never behave steadily. I've discovered that by doing the action of love before I feel it often has a way of bringing my feelings up to speed. The horse should be in front of the cart.
The reverse of that, perhaps, is God feeling a great deal of love for us but having to allow hard things to happen to us for whatever necessary reason, whether that is what he feels like doing or not.
This is a bit of a jumble. I find love to be difficult. It could be no less as the greatest commandment.
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Labels: essay, personal, reader input, religion
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 8/13/2007 10:04:00 AM
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1 Comments:
This is beautifully expressed, Julie. I particularly like your last sentence, because it seems to me that so many people today (myself included the majority of the time) equate love only with good things and fail to understand that so often the love we need is tough love. And so often, the love God gives is tough love - because His love is deep and so wonderful that He gives us what we need, even when it's the farthest thing from what we want.
By 
beth, at
13/8/07 11:33
