The Christian Imagination

We often hear that God is love. We hear that God loves us. We are not only okay with these statements, we say them to others.

So, why is it strange to talk about God as Lover? Does that make it ‘too’ personal and intimate? Is that just a way we can’t conceive of relating to God? Does God feel? Or is God pure logic?

St. John of the Cross, in his famous Dark Night of the Soul poem, says:

5. Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6. Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him, And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7. The breeze blew from the turret As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8. I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Is the Song of Solomon primarily a human love song between husband and wife, or an allegory about God’s love for His people? I prefer the former. There are many more comfortable with the latter. If you prefer the allegorical view, are you comfortable with the metaphors for intimacy and sex that would be attributed to God?

In the Book of Hosea, Hosea is commanded to love a woman, Gomer, that he knows will be unfaithful. There is nothing clinical about his love though. He puts his heart into it, and LOVES her. At some point, he loves her enough to let her go, and later, loves her enough to redeem her from slavery. He doesn’t hold back, even after being betrayed. This parallels the words God speaks through Hosea. God loves. He made a covenant to love, and even when betrayed, repeatedly, HE made a covenant, and HE won’t hold back his heart after having it broken. After awhile, God lets His people go their way, when they choose to worship other gods. Once they are broken, he then loves, in spite of betrayal: “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14).

I think of myself, and how I hold back my heart for fear of being hurt. How well do I love after being hurt and betrayed? Would I do what Hosea did, even if commanded by God? What’s amazing though, is that this isn’t about my love, but about God’s. He loves US that way, and if I can get that into my heart, maybe I can grasp a fraction of what it means to love others that way.

If you’ve ever known the love of God, you know it’s nothing but reckless and it’s nothing but raging. Sometimes it hurts to be loved, and if it doesn’t hurt, it’s probably not love, maybe infatuation. I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don’t really love Him, and they don’t really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world. It’s also the only thing that can bring us salvation, and it’s like everything else that is really wonderful: there’s a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt.
-Rich Mullins

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
–Romans 3:10-12

One of my friends and I were talking one day, and he asserted that without Christ, we are worthless. The Scripture above was what he brought to my attention. Okay. Let’s start there.

In the KJV, the word is unprofitable. According to the Greek Lexicon, it means “make useless, render unserviceable of character.”
The passage itself quotes the following Psalm 14:1-3:
“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

To start with, have all turned away? Is there no one who does good? The Psalm explicity says that ALL have turned aside, thus implying that no one seeks God. Is that true?
The Psalm also gives a condition: Those who say there is no God. This condition is missing from the quotation in Romans.
Interestingly, the idea of worthless/unprofitable is not found in the Psalm being quoted. Instead, the word is corrupt/filthy, which in the Hebrew Lexicon is “to be corrupt morally, tainted.”

I contend that people, by being creating in the image of God, have intrinsic worth and value. God dying for the world (John 3:16), God loving us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8), means that people, all people, have to be worth SOMETHING, don’t they?

Now, whether our actions are worthwhile without Christ, that’s a good question. As far as I’m concerned, people can be capable of acts of love, charity, good, and beauty without Christ. I can see that. Are those things valuable in God’s eyes? Certainly those things don’t justify us in His sight. How much ‘use’ are we without knowing Christ? Are we useful? A case could be made that we are not. But are we, as human beings, valuable? Of course.

People wouldn’t be worth loving and redeeming if they were worthless, would they?

That’s the title for the February 10th My Utmost for His Highest entry.

The people of God in Isaiah’s day had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the heavens, that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright….Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he never was in.

Part of the entry talks about how idols steal our attention from God and dull our imaginations. That only makes sense, since idols do our dreaming for us and tell us what to imagine. We seek experiences that excite our senses. It becomes a way of life for us when we are numb and without the capacity to imagine. Without hope, without the Spirit, we seek that which makes us feel alive, if only for a moment.

Imagine.

” I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people–not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.” –1 Corinthians 5:9-10

Christians are called to live a certain standard, and only they have committed to that standard. The rest of the world has not. God spends a lot of time talking about immorality within Israel through the prophets, not so much outside Israel, because Israel had a covenant with God. Guess what? When you make a commitment, you are taking on expectations. You are choosing to be interdependent with other people and giving up some of your independence voluntarily. This verse is clearly talking about Christians who choose to take the name and have faith on their own terms, yet still be a part of community. If you are going to choose to follow your own path within a faith that is, by nature, communal, don’t expect support from the community.

What I love about this verse, though, is how it clearly says NOT to judge those outside our community by our standards. Further, we are to associate with people of this world. At least in the United States, we make the mistake of thinking this was at some point a theocracy, like Israel. In other words, we equate this country with Israel in such a way as to claim it to be a Christian nation with God as it’s head, as if the entire country has a covenant with God like Israel did, and therefore that we should be able to judge people the same way the prophets did. If the world can’t see the light of Christ in our lives, what exactly is judging people supposed to accomplish?