The Trouble with Jesus: One can’t know Love without knowing its Lover.

Now, You Christians really like this part. You’ve got it inscribed on your bracelets, shirts and mugs, and you gush when you say it. Seems to some of us though, you haven’t really read it, more like you take these words and make them be what you want to hear. Let me rephrase what it sounds like to an outsider. God is out to get us. Either we take and swallow God’s deal, or we’re fried. It says God loves and is not condemning or judging, but it certainly doesn’t play like that in my world. One contradiction after another is all it is.

So at this point we say, Sorry, we didn’t mean it and God didn’t mean it either? You want what you say you don’t want, to make it all into what you want to hear? Not going to happen. Granted though, this is the crux of this whole thing. What is required is clarity of thought and expression. It’s a valid need and not to be ignored by any of us.

Context First

Notice the limitations we have with it. We live right now. No kidding. Written 2000 years ago, some things are not going to mean what we think it means. Start with this, “As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole…” That’s what medical professions use as their logo, right? Yes, it came from a story of healing, referencing when the Israelites in the wilderness suffered from snake bites. God provided healing in this pole for those who gaze upon it.  (Numbers 21:8-9) Lifting one’s focus above one’s self to God is what heals and restores. Sure, the image seems strangely voodoo-ish, but if it’s good enough for your favorite doc, don’t bash it.

Jesus saw himself on it except his pole was a cross on which he’d be lifted. Like the Israelites, anyone who looks up to it in belief that God heals and restores all that’s wrong with us, gets “eternal life.” That’s huge, a lot more than you may think or have been led to think. It means that life with God begins now, not when you gasp your last. Now. In God’s own presence and being, you have it made. God out to get you? Thank God for it. God wants to get you close and live a full life with you. Yes, right now and again even after your body gives out.

The How and How Much of Love

Then, in just 24 words or so, Jesus clarifies. “God loved the world so much…” Only a copious Love can make it happen, the kind of Love that will do anything to be with another.

“… so much God gave…” It took the fullest sacrifice that can be measured, so much Love that gave and spilled all it could, a surrender that shatters all concept of a love that serves itself. “I came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.”  (Mark 10:45)

“…God gave his only Son…” Love came to show how Love is done, a Love that is total, unreserved, and unrestricted.

“…his only Son that whoever believes in him…” Jesus offered it in his call to “Come and see.”   (John 1:39) Watch me, observe me, draw closer, get nearer to what I do and who I am. Know it for yourself and not just what you’ve been told or what someone else wants you to know. And if you get close enough, I will change you and reverse all that you thought you were or could ever be. For in me you will know God and believe, in me you will have faith in what I can do, and in me you will trust as you walk in my path.

“…whoever believes in him will not perish…” Yes, that for which you’ve striven is what I want for you as well. By reversal and restoration, you won’t be separated from Love, but find your life, your soul, that innermost, intimate part of you that only God really sees and of which you have only part understanding.

“…not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) I have come that you may have life and have it fully, abundantly, rich and satisfying with the essentials of all that life is and needs. Even more so, it will carry you from this life, this trouble, into an even better existence with me forever.

So God loves and God gives. God gives God’s self in human form who lived and died for real, reversing trouble by reversing where trouble ends into what God and every created person wants, not death but life that fulfills Love.

Love. For the Love of God, Jesus came. Not to condemn, not to bring judgement, but to bring Love.

Woo Hoo! You set that up well. If only your Jesus had ended with that. But he says too much. Way too much. Next is this thing about if how you don’t buy into God’s plan, if you don’t trust it, you’re judged, punished, and that can’t be good. Then he goes into this light and darkness thing. (Hate to say this, but does it sound like it has racial overtones here?) Not liking this at all. Feeling like it’s how you either sugar-coat all things God or you want to scare the living crap out of someone. Son of God, not ready to buy yet.

Choice or Consequence

If this was easy, you’d question its worth. Again, look at the layers. Talk of judging today isn’t politically correct (like nobody ever does it, just saying). Have you heard it said that tolerance is the love-language of today’s culture? Judging doesn’t fly well when you are supposedly a proponent of Love. Understood. But what seems to be the real misunderstanding is what judgement means here and who does the judging.

Look at it like this. A parent loves a child like nothing else in this world. Now, if that’s so, then the parent wants the best for that child. Think of God’s Love like that for “the world”, that’s all of us. Now, a loving parent wants to help a child grow up to be the best possible kid ever. So that parent will lovingly direct and teach that kid how to be smart and good and stay away from anything that can hurt that kid. When really little, you hold their hands constantly when outside the house. Then you let go more and more. But you teach them to stay on the sidewalk before crossing the street, how to look both ways, read traffic signals, and to cross only when it’s absolutely safe. All out of love and wanting the very best for your kid. God’s like that, too.

But the day will come when the kid crosses the street with no parent standing around. The kid chooses to trust what the parent has taught or to do it however they like. Worst case scenario though, if the kid runs out into traffic and gets killed, it’s not the parent’s fault. (Stop there; this is an analogy. No analogy is perfect, but please go along for the point made.) Don’t blame the parent for what was taught but not obeyed. In the end, the kid made a choice, and the consequence was tragic.

Now, see God like this. God has given God’s best for the world, actually coming here as one of us to teach how to live and how to know God, but most importantly, how much God Loves the world and to what extreme in Jesus that Love is given. The choice to believe is open, not forced. If one chooses otherwise, it’s a choice that can have eternal consequences. That’s not on God; that’s on us. That’s not judgement. God did God’s best to let the world know all it takes is a belief in what Jesus did, how he made a promise written in blood so we don’t have to.

In today’s world, light and dark themes for good and evil choices don’t work well. Agreed. But go with this. You can’t see clearly or well without light. Darkness makes for poor navigation, and it can hide a lot, especially what some would prefer not to be seen. The fact is some choices have clarity of vision and truth, and some choices are cloudy, murky, ones with limited spiritual sight. If someone stays in the dark too long, sight can be impaired to the point of blindness. One is able to spotlight choices, and the other seeks to hide and cover itself from those choices. Judgement isn’t the point, but the choices one makes is.

This makes sense as long as you accept one premise. God set this system up. If God was really that loving, then why make this requirement of “believing”? If God really “so loved the world” then why not take us all in, beliefs or not, warts and all? What if we don’t want to give God all this control and say so?

The Lover in Love

Therein lies the crisis. Sometimes the people who seem most disturbed by and who cry against this system-set up are the ones most fearful of it. Why be afraid of something if you don’t believe it’s true? If it’s not true, no one is going to lose by it. Except that it stabs into and opens up the most vulnerable part of everyone, the need to be Loved, not as the world loves imperfectly, but completely and wholly as you are and are meant to be.

One can’t know Love without knowing its Lover. That’s the choice.

John 3:14-21

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