God Is Love

I heard a sermon today in Church that sparked in me the desire to write about it.  It’s not something I haven’t heard before, but I think something that we often forget. 

Since living in DC I’ve been going to a church that meets in the basement of a coffee house around the corner from where we’re living.  It’s a fairly young church, with I think 4 or 5 other campuses around DC. 

Today’s sermon was on 1 John 4:7-21 (click to read it).  One of the points of emphasis of the sermon was that God is love.  The pastor started out by reading the passage, then talked a bit about how we define love.  She got us thinking by saying “what if we replaced “love” here with “nice?”  Instead of “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” It would be: God is nice.  Whoever is nice lives in God and God in them.  When we change that, it loses so much meaning, not to mention the implications it would have for our faith, and for God being a just God.  See, if we really think about it, God is not nice.  God is love.  God is just.  God is not nice.  If God were nice he would not punish sin.  If God were nice, Ananias and Sapphira would not have been struck dead.  But God isn’t nice, He’s just.  It reminds of a scene in “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  You can see the video if you click here and start at the 6:00 mark.  In the book it happens far earlier, and here is the text from the book (a bit more meaningful)

“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Then, being typical me, I started thinking about how this applies to social justice.  If God is love, and being born of God and knowing God means we must love, then shouldn’t we show the same love to others that Jesus showed to us? 

John says that “whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.  For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 7:20).  We see the poor and suffering all around us, yet we continue to allow them to suffer in their poverty, and we allow people all over the world to suffer in justices because we sit by idly and do nothing.  

At a time when so many political issues are related to the budget and there are talks everywhere about cutting spending, I wonder about how this applies to foreign aid and welfare spending.  Republicans in congress claim that we need to cut foreign aid from the budget, and reduce spending on social welfare programs, yet I ask, in this, how are we showing love to our brothers and sisters?  If we are called to love our brothers and sisters, and if God says that if we know Him, then love will flow out from us, how can we justify cutting programs that help those most in need?

Those are some thoughts for now.  I’d love to see comments on this and have a conversation about it.