GOD IS LOVE

For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?

Psalm 6:5

Perhaps the above verse is an odd way to start a discussion on God is love, but to say God is love begs some questions about God.  To love is an action that fulfills the need to be loved.  Love is not isolative.  Even love of one's self requires an objective view of one's own being as differentiated from other beings. Who is the me that I love?  One cannot love without love returned or having experienced love's return. Someone who has never experienced being loved has no compass by which to love. So to say God is love has given me pause to wonder:

Does God have needs?

Does God need us?

Does God need me?

As a Christian, it has been drilled into my mind that God loves me and everyone, but if I don't love God back, God doesn't need me.  I'm dispensable.  I can go to Hell. 

God doesn't want me to, go to Hell (or so I've been told) but then again, it's the only free choice I have in this relationship, according to either/or-ness of salvation theology.   As the letter to the Ephesians points out, I am saved by grace and that not of myself.  Which roughly translates there is little if anything that I can do that has any real value to God other than to be an object of salvation or subject myself to salvation.  Undoubtedly this subjugating quandary prompted John Milton to surmise in "Paradise Lost", "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

If God doesn't need me, if God doesn't need anyone or anything, does God really love me or anything? Can God be love? 

THE NEEDINESS OF GOD

Psalm 6:5, as quoted above, would suggest that God  has needs, otherwise the case for saving the psalmist's life, based on the perceived need of God to be remembered and to receive thanks, would be pointless.  In other words, if God doesn't have a need to be remembered or acknowledged via thanksgiving, the psalmist was wasting his breath.  One cannot make an appeal, such as the psalmist did,  to someone who has no needs upon which an appeal can be directed.

Psalm 6:5 undermines the whole notion that we are dispensable in the eyes of God.  In fact, amidst all the mixed messages one can derive out of the Hebrew Scriptures, one thing emerges:  God cares about what happens because it's important to God.  If something is important, it is because it fulfills a need.  

Grant it, the Hebrew scriptures appear to be mostly geared to the relationship between God and his Chosen People, the Israelites, and offers a fine example of the differentiating paradigm found in all religions, but as the story develops the paradox within the paradigm emerges and it emerges early.  

For example, in the story of Noah and The Flood (pre-Abraham) God's need of us is intimated in the reason God does not destroy all of God's earthly creation. The story begs the question why God just didn't completely start over.  I realize this is a complex story, but let's face it , God sought out Noah because God could not be without a recognizing other, and it is in Noah's recognition of God that deems him righteous in the eyes of God. The same is true for most of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures - righteousness is connected to recognition.

So, does God exist without us? 

Well - from a human perspective,  I'd say no!  If we humans don't exist (as far as we humans are concerned), God doesn't exist either.

So, in the story of Noah and Flood, God repents of the thought of destroying everything and the deed of drowning most everyone and everything.   Why?  Because God can't BE without us.  At the very least, he needs a couple of us (male and female) to keep love going, as told in this story.

As shocking and arrogant as this may sound, it's not intended to be.  God made us to be sentient creatures to fulfill a need of God that the psalmist reminds God of; to be recognized, to be remembered, to be appreciated.  In other words, the psalmist makes a very bold case to God that if he, the psalmist, doesn't exist, for all practical purposes, God doesn't either (at least as far as the psalmist is concerned).

As I have mentioned in my post, The Bible, Myth, Mystery, and Theology , it would appear that God wanted mankind to develop an independent sense of self, and the only way to accomplish that is if we had the capacity to rebel and chose our own path.  God's purpose in this, at least mythologically speaking, was to have a sentient beings, us, who could love God independently, to love God for who God is, so we became the object of God's love that can freely respond to it.  This is the reason the universe exists, the reason we exist.  God loves what God creates.  God needs us to respond to God's love, at least on this speck of cosmic dust known as Earth. 

SALVATION THEOLOGY

Salvation theology doesn't get this important aspect of our relationship with God.  In salvation theology, everything comes from God.  We are so flawed that we no longer have the capacity of being co-creators with God in our little corner of the universe. We're the needy ones in what amounts to be a codependent relationship with God where we must return God's love or face the consequences.  In salvation theology, it's all about our helplessness and hopelessness, as indicated in the 1John 4:8-10:

"He that loveth (agapon) not knoweth not God; for God is love (agape).  In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love (agape), not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 

The imposed self-deprecation for being human that is thrust upon us in these verses sounds pious and humble, but it misses the point of God being love (the point the author is trying to make, but fails to do so).  It misses the point that we were created not only for love but also to love - to love God.  [I cannot overstate my appreciation of the fact that English has only one word for love, Love- but that's a topic for another post.]

But if the above verses from 1 John are correct, how can we say we that we love God of our own free will?   Apparently, the only free choice we really have (according to 1 John) is not to love God.  If we love God, it is because God first loved us (or so I was told in Sunday School).  But this begs other questions:

Do I say that I love God because I'm afraid of the consequences of saying I don't love God?

If I love God for fear of not loving God, is my love true?

Can true love be compellable?  Can we be forced to love because we are loved?

Salvation theology says,  Yes.  The only way to love God is to acknowledge God's unmerited love for us and accept it. In fact there are Christian movies titled, "Compelled by love."

I would say no.  True love is never forced, and loving someone who demands my love is what the  ancient Greeks defined as mania.  Need I say more.

Of course, salvation theology, itself, indicates the neediness of God.  Even 1 John begs the question of God's need for us.   Why did God see a need to save us?  Why did Jesus have to pay the price for our sins? [See posts on Salvation: Part I & Part II] 

Sometimes the answers given by theologians are vague; such as, God requires justices be met because God is unchanging and consistent.  Since God condemned us to die because of sin, the only way to help us escape everlasting death is to have Jesus pay the price, and so on. 

They totally skip over the obvious conclusion that God needs us.

Let's face it, people don't want a needy God, but we do want to be needed.  We want to be loved and God, like us, cannot truly love us without a true need for us. 

JESUS' SOLUTION

Jesus, himself, offers different perspective from that of 1 John.  For Jesus, the type of love he expressed towards God was a familial love. [For Greek scholars this would be storge (familial love)  as opposed to agape (mostly translated by Christians as God's love, or unconditional love)].

Salvation theology goes whole-heartedly with the agape type of love, but Jesus goes a different route when talking about his love for God and God's love for us.  God is father, or daddy, and this was the type of love relationship he tried to get his followers to understand. To do so he employs both the impulse of religion and the paradox within the differentiating paradigm of religion.

Jesus does this by offering a slight, but significant alteration to a verse from Hebrew Scriptures found in Deuteronomy  11: 13:

"And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul."

In Matthew 22: 37-40 Jesus quotes Deuteronomy with an addendum:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Jesus circumvents the dilemma of having to love God out of fear, or from being compelled to love God because of a legalistic obligation by making it a willful choice on our part.  Grant it he employs the legalistic language his listeners were use to hearing (particularly the scribe who was asking him about the most important law), but he is really opening a way to love God freely and deeply. 

In essence what Jesus is saying is that the way to love God is to love what God loves, us.  In this is both a challenge and a solution.  Jesus is saying one cannot directly love God in isolative manner.  One cannot love God and ignore what God has created or love God without addressing the human need to be loved. In fact, Jesus connects our image of hell, not to a failure of loving God, but to a failure of loving other humans.  In other words, our needs are God's needs.

Jesus approach values humanity for being human.  Jesus elevates the love of our own kind as tantamount to loving God.  If one wants to freely express one's love of God, love yourself, love your neighbor, love your enemies.  In short, love what God loves.  That's the restorative message of Jesus.  For Jesus, that is redemption -to no longer hide from each other, to no longer hide from God, to love who we are and to love what others are. There is an immense richness to what Jesus is talking about.  God loves diversity.  

Anyone in a loving relationship with another person knows that we don't always like the same things, the same food, the same music, etc. but loving relationships extend beyond mere likes and goes to a deeper need between those in love.  It is loving the other, in the midst of all the diversity that exists between both, that somehow fills each other out.  This is complimentary nature of love.  Love is the expression of the paradox that so often is associated with the presence of God.

Now, back to the original question, does God have needs?

Yes, God needs us to fill God out.  God needs to be loved, just as we need to be loved by God.  God's neediness is a universal expression of the religious impulse:  "We need each other," and because of that, according to the Biblical narrative, God created the universe.  What Jesus fleshes out for us is that to love God is to take on the challenge to love the diversity that God offers. God's love for us fills us out, because everything that is, is in God. 

The Hebrew scriptures are much better at telling this narrative.  God chooses a people to choose God. Creation itself is an expression of God's neediness, the need to be perceived, the need to be recognized, the need to be loved.  Love is complex and so much more so when it comes to God.

Love says need, says desire, says longing, says life. 

I can hear some saying that I am trying to attribute to God human feelings.  I would say quite the opposite.  It is the very image of God that is expressed in our collective human feelings, in our desires, in our longings, and in our need to be loved.

God is love and God be loved.

Until next time, stay faithful.