Week Two: Unconditional Love
What is God?
What is God?
God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything. He is eternal, infinite, and unchangeable in his power and perfection, goodness and glory, wisdom, justice, and truth. Nothing happens except through him and by his will.
After studying to be a yoga teacher in my early 20’s, I practiced a very fast-and-loose form of Buddhism.
Buddhism is a spirituality centered upon the life and teachings of a man named Siddhartha Gautama, who came to be known as the Enlightened One, or the Buddha.
The Buddhist tradition is non-theistic, rejecting the idea of God as a creator and sustainer. Rather, Buddhism is built upon an abiding faith in the rational intelligence of creation, the impermanence of the universe, the pervasive existence of suffering, and the unity of the nature of all things.
During this chapter of my life, I called God “the Universe.” I recognized divinity as a permeating essence animating everything in creation. My faith wasn’t placed in a powerful, benevolent, and just God, but rather, in the observable laws of the created world; My eyes remained fixed upon creation, instead of allowing the miraculous existence of the universe to testify to God’s existence.
When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him?
- Psalm 8:3-4 (CSB)
The Scriptures refer to this as idolatry, the reverence, worship, and servitude of any created thing in the place of God the Creator.
I will speak more on the topic of idolatry in week seventeen of this series, but for now I will simply point to the fact that we humans have been in an ongoing and futile battle to somehow successfully “crack the God code” since time immemorial.
This idea is that if you could somehow bypass God, you would be able to elevate your will above the will of the Creator and live life on your terms, not His.
If you could somehow usurp God, you would be able to feign some semblance of God-like omnipotence and control over the conditions of your life.
If you could somehow circumvent God, you would be able to live without any objective standard upon which to be held accountable.
If you could somehow overrule God, you would be able to jerry-rig the scales of natural law to perpetually weigh in your favor.
Or… so it may seem.
In attempts to find a way around an omnipresent Creator, we end up falling further and further away from the conditions we were deigned to thrive within.
In attempts to rebel against an omnipotent Creator, we live adrift without the security and stability of Truth to moor to.
In attempts to skirt around an omni-belevolent Creator, we become untethered from a higher sense of purpose and meaning as human beings.
And, paradoxically, in trying to be liberated from God’s “restrictions” are we further enslaved to the volatility of this material existence.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
— Romans 1:25 (CSB)
In rejecting God, we insist we are becoming more free when, in truth, we are increasingly becoming less free.
Every other path besides the one with “the narrow gate” is, however subtly or overtly, a meritocracy—requiring that I earn merits in order to achieve success. That merit may be performing certain acts or rituals, acquiescing to certain rules, developing certain abilities, acquiring certain knowledge, or displaying a certain level of rigor.
This is the spirituality of the world, upon which “the wide path” is paved—including the religion of secularism as well as every other faith tradition on Earth.
The hidden message that lines this path is both that the good life is based on my own achievements and that that favor with God is only made available through my efforts.
It is perceiving God as saying, “I will love you, but only when…”
In contrast, Jesus offers a path to success, peace, and kinship within the kingdom of God that effectively subverts this order of operations.
Jesus attests that the good life is not sown from the seeds of control, favor, or gratification, but rather, by way of submission, humility, and sacrifice.
Jesus points us to the infinite, ever present, limitless love of the Father, rather than a limited love based upon the conditions of earned merit.
Jesus invites us into the constancy of God’s unending love, which contrasts with the vulnerable, wavering nature of the illusive promises of this world.
And Jesus assures us that our Creator is present to, cares about, and loves us, always and in all ways.
I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow — not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below — indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
— Romans 8:38-29 (NLT)