Are we kidding ourselves about the love of God? We talk about how much He loves the world and try to excuse the evil in the world with the concept of God’s sovereignty–you know, God has mysterious reasons for allowing evil to happen. After all, the ultimate responsibility for what happens in our world has to lie at God’s door–He is all powerful, isn’t He? We’ll just have to wait until we all die and get to Heaven. It will be glorious and we will find our answers then.

     NO!  And, I mean a thousand times, NO!

     In Isaiah 1:18, God is quoted with these words, “Come now, and let us reason together…” In order to reason with us, God has to be rational and intellectual and has to be available to confer with us. I believe He is just waiting for us to take  the time to think things through with Him. After all, God cared enough about us understanding Him and what is happening in our world that He led people to write, edit, translate, and publish our Bibles. Within the pages of those Bibles, we can find the story behind the challenges we face in this world and the victory we have over the kingdom of evil. And, we can find the power of God’s absolute love–the love that is perfect, complete, and real.

     The Apostle John left no doubt about God and love when he stated “God is love” (I John 4:8, 16).  Jesus himself also spoke of God’s motivation in sending His son to the world, “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16), a point reiterated by the Apostle Paul, “But God…for his great love wherewith he loved us…” (Ephesians 2:4). 

     I believe most of us agree that God is love, but if we are honest with ourselves, we do add some “Yes, buts..” to the concept. When we cannot understand how horrific things happen, we tend to think that God did indeed allow them to happen and that God is sovereign. These escape routes bring us some comfort and strengthen our ability to go on, but they also can cause niggling doubts deep inside us, doubts that we never talk about.

     I am establishing this blog to address the “Yes, buts…” of our understanding of God and His love. After independently studying the Bible for forty years, I have discovered many treasures within its pages. In a sense, I am pulling out my treasure chest to share with you from the bounty I have found. Just remember each of you has your own treasure chest. Some of you have already opened your own chest and are enjoying the gems it contains–for you, what I share may bring some new insight. Others of you know you have your chest, but can’t seem to get it opened–I’ll help you. And, still others of you don’t know you have a chest with your name on it. I’ll help you find it and get it opened. Believe me when I tell you, opening and rummaging through the treasure chest of the Bible will be well worth your time.

     Now back to the title of this post–”How Absolute is God’s Love?” Defining the word “absolute” as being perfect, complete, and real, my answer is God’s love is steadfastly absolute. God’s love is perfect in that it is not and cannot be marred and in that it is flawless. (There is nothing wrong with God’s love, so start considering why there is so much wrong in our world.) God’s love is also complete in that there is nothing lacking in it–let me repeat, there is nothing lacking in God’s love. His love works and it will not fail. And, God’s love is real. In a world full of deception and fantasy, God’s love stands above everything else in its substance. There is nothing false about the love of God. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

     Okay, so God’s love is absolute. Then where has all the destruction and death in our world come from? Why is there so much evil? In my next post, I will piece together an explanation from the Bible by using a few verses and  reasoning out the story of evil. To start thinking about it, consider this paradox–evil exists because God’s love is absolute.

     All scriptures in this post are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Please feel free to comment, but make sure your comments are respectful to other people–any that are not will be deleted.

 

     ©2009 by Patricia Zell. All rights reserved.