All You Need Is Love

 

I often wonder why I have problems with Christianity and the Bible that, apparently, few other Christians do.  I suspect that the simplest answer is that I start with the wrong assumptions.

I picture God as someone who wants something from us: either a master who wants obedient slaves, or a sadist who wants victims to torment.  Yet, logically, this makes no sense.  We cannot be useful to God in any way, since there is nothing that we can give God that he does not already have.  And God has no insecurities that might drive him to want to make himself feel better by hurting those weaker than himself. 

Therefore, the only possible reason for God to take an interest in us is that he loves us and wants to give us what is best for us.  If I started out with the core assumption that God loves everyone, I would have the key to answering most of the questions I worry about.  My answers to some of them might be as follows:

Does God love some people more than others – for example, loving poor people more than rich people?  If so, should we be working to increase poverty, so that there would be more people whom God loved?

No. God loves each person infinitely.  This means that he loves everyone equally – you can’t have one infinity that is bigger than another.  Because God loves all of us, he wants economic justice so that everyone has enough to live on, instead of some people being billionaires while others are starving.

Does ‘giving my life to Jesus’ mean that my own personality is supposed to be erased and I become a zombie with Jesus possessing my body instead?  Or does it mean that I am supposed to stop making decisions for myself, and do only what God orders me to do?

No.  God created us because he loves us, and created us different because he is interested in us as individuals.  If he wanted thousands of identical duplicates of Jesus, he would have made them. 

Does God want me to hate myself?  Does he want me to hate my parents because they caused me to be born, and love only my enemies, because they want to destroy me, which is what I ought to want if I hate myself?

No.  God created us because he loves us, and he wants us to love those whom he loves: ourselves and other people.  So that includes loving your enemies, but it doesn’t mean you have to love the fact that they are your enemies.

When I was a child and the school bullies kicked me in the playground and I complained about it to the teachers, the teachers told me, ‘Just forgive them.’ Does forgiving mean we should just let people do what they like? 

People use ‘forgive’ to mean lots of different things, which can get confusing, so let’s concentrate on the idea of loving your enemies, and wanting what is best for them.  Now, obviously, what a child who gets a kick out of kicking people needs is to learn better ways of interacting with people.  Allowing them to get on with it without intervening wasn’t in their best interests.

Now let’s consider a more serious case.  Supposing your tormentors had not been children who kicked and jeered at you, but an adult who raped you.  Should you report them to the police?  If the police ignore you, should you campaign to expose your abuser?  Of course!  Other people will still be at risk if you don’t.  Loving your neighbour is about loving everyone, not just loving your enemies and ignoring innocent victims.

Will God refuse to forgive us for our sins unless we’ve forgiven everyone?

God has already forgiven us.  He has already forgiven everyone.  So, if we are willing to accept forgiveness and be reconciled with God, we will be in heaven with him – and our enemies might be, too.  But heaven wouldn’t be heaven for us if we hate each other – so we need to learn to accept each other as people.  This doesn’t mean denying the harm that people have done to you.  But it does mean not wishing evil on them.

The Bible says that God does not treat us as our sins deserve – and many Christians believe that the way atonement works is that Jesus was punished instead of us.  Doesn’t that mean that we DO deserve punishment, and that, if we care about justice, we ought to pray for this to happen?

It’s not about ‘deserving’; it’s about love.  Most of justice isn’t about receiving the punishment or reward that we have earned, but about doing what is right.  For example, a new-born baby has not done any work to deserve to be fed, but nobody would think it was just to abandon a baby to starve.

Is it always wrong to have a sense of entitlement?  If so, shouldn’t I refuse any good thing I am offered – and certainly avoid seeking any good thing that doesn’t easily come to me – because I have no right to them?

Firstly, when psychologists talk about ‘a sense of entitlement’, they mean believing that only you have the right to certain things, and that other people exist just to satisfy your whims.  They are not condemning the belief that everyone has human rights.

But to some people, ‘rights’ implies a set of legal demands.  This can lead to a lot of legal wrangling about whose rights trump whose. 

So, instead, it might be helpful to think in terms of human worth and human dignity.  All people should be treated with respect, because all people are loved by God. 

How do I know these answers are true?

You don’t.  Most of them need a lot more thought.  But if you’re going to believe in God at all, working from the premise that God is love seems a pretty good starting point.