Love Like None Other

Flash back to last week during a rather intense battle with my oldest child:
Me: "I love you too much to allow you to be unkind to Caleb."
Jonathan: "I don't want you to love me!!!"


If you have a mild-mannered child this (and many other things Jonathan has uttered) may be appalling to you.  For me, it is a reflection of so much that I see in me.

If asked, I am certain that Jonathan wouldn't turn down the parts of love that appear nice: dinner on the table, my time spent playing with him, hugs, kisses, and bedtime stories.  These things I do because I love him.  Would my love be complete if it were simply brush strokes of niceties that were easy for each of us to swallow?

What is love?  Is it a quiet acceptance of all things?  Is it a continual bashing of truth? Neither, both, or something else entirely?

Love isn't a bumper sticker or a slogan or a thing that any of us can claim to do well (apart from some serious intervention).  Love is complex, beautiful, intricate, healing, powerful...

Imagine a beautiful painting by Monet, Renoir, Michelangelo.  Imagine if we decided that there were parts that needed a little more yellow or some other subtle hints of green.  Would our additions add to the painting or distort the image that these masters had created?  What if we decided that there was too much blue in a cloudy sky and took some away only?  Would we truly see the beauty that the artist intended?

The way love has been portrayed by the church, by people, by life has distorted the image of our Creator.  The Bible has been used as a weapon to beat people or sifted for use to create a different image of God.  All of this distorts the beauty, the awe and the wonder that a God could love us this much.  The Bible is a love story.  An amazing, powerful, life-transforming love story about God.

Conservatives have used truth as a weapon against people, and have distorted the beauty of God's love by making the Bible say more than it actually says.  We miss Jesus' point when we use his words like weapons.

Liberal positions discount parts of the Bible because they deem them "old", "out of date", "for a different time"...  God's love isn't comfortable, easy or self-affirming.  It is beautiful, transforming, restorative, and worth surrendering for.

Do I want God to love me?  Really love me?  It means that He'll have to continually bring me to a place where I understand how much I need to be rescued.  He'll show me my pride and break me.  He'll love me enough to show me my deepest failings.  He'll show me all of this because He loves me and wants me to find my only hope in Him.

My filters for speaking might be more sophisticated than my four year olds, but our desperate need is the same: we need to be rescued and restored by the One who loves us perfectly.