Christianity 101

I’ve been reading through the book of 1st John recently. I don’t need too many more complications in my life, and this is a very uncomplicated book, with a very uncomplicated message: God is love.

Henri Nouwen says that “knowing God means to consistently, radically, and very concretely announce and reveal that God is love and only love... and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul, this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits. This unconditional, unlimited love is what John calls God’s first love: Let us love, because God loved us first.”

God’s love is first; human love came second. And Nouwen notes that human love often leaves us “doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful... there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred... these are all the shadow side of this second [human] love... [flawed by] the darkness that never completely leaves the human heart... The radical good news is that this second love is only a broken reflection of the first love, and that the first love is offered to us by a God in whom there are no shadows...”

Dallas Willard is one of the truly wise souls in our world today... and this is his take on who this God is, this God that asks for nothing less than all we are:

“The acid test for any teaching about God is this: Is the God presented one that can be loved—heart, soul, mind and strength? If the thoughtful, honest answer is “not really,” then we need to look elsewhere or deeper. It does not really matter how intellectually or doctrinally sophisticated our approach is. If it fails to set a lovable God—a radiant, happy, friendly, accessible, and totally competent being—before ordinary people, we have gone wrong. We should not keep going in the same direction, but turn around and take another road.” Our journey, then, is on the road to learning more about that God.

If God is love, how should God’s family live? How is that shown among us? There is a story told about John the Apostle, the writer of this letter, very very old now, so old that he had to be carried into the meeting place... and once there, all he would say, every week, was “Children, love one another.” Finally, one of his students asked, “Master, why do you say this same thing, week after week?” John smiled. “Because,” he whispered, “it is the Lord’s command... and if you do this and only this, it is enough.”

1 John is one of my three favorite books in the Bible... there's Galatians, because it talks so powerfully about grace; Ephesians, because of the incredible and beautiful picture of the church, the body of Christ... and this book, because it takes me right to the main thing. The main thing is love. Jesus had 2 commandments; love God, love each other.

Because (and I’ll let you in on a little secret), for all the talking we seminary grads do, the Christian life is very very simple; not easy, but simple. It’s love. It’s that little U2 riff... “and you give yourself away... and you give yourself away... and you give yourself away...” If we’re not doing that, not much else that we do matters.