What’s God Got To Do With It?
A Dialogue
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
My old saints uniformly attributed their formidable love for neighbor to their prior love for God. Without that first love, they claimed, no heroism or longevity in the service of others is possible. How could Mother Teresa lift the dead from Calcutta’s streets day after day, year after year, if not for love of God? But we know that this claim, although edifying, is not really true. Atheists routinely do the same, humbling believers like me who do much less. We must love our neighbor if we say we love God; but experience teaches that the reverse is not necessarily so. [Edwin] Vacek says that the Christian believer is distinguishable from the atheist in this alone: one loves God, the other doesn’t. But if the practical outcome is the same, why bother loving God? What’s it worth to keep the great commandment? There’s a way to find out. — J. Mary Luti[1]
1. Is the “practical outcome” of the work of the Christian and the atheist really the same?
(If a Christian feeds a hungry person and an atheist feeds a hungry person, does the hungry person get equally fed?)
2. A few words about “loving God”…
a. Respond to this statement: “As I have been opened to a wider view of liberating love, which I believe is God’s life among us, I have come, strangely, to wonder whether “loving God” is something that we can do at all. Maybe “loving God” should not be the goal of a truly Christian life.” (If not, then what?)
b. What did I mean by: “the Christian trivialization of “worshiping” or “loving” God.”
c. If the following statements are true, is there any way to truly love God?
“The human mind is a perpetual factory for idols.” John Calvin
The sermon asks (mostly rhetorically) “Is (my love for God) just a reinforcement of my own views and beliefs, about my own little world and my own little domesticated god?”
3. Do you fear God?
On his 700 Club newscast yesterday (8/20/02), Pat Robertson made the statement that unless America lives by the commandments, “God will withdraw his shield of protection…” (Falwell made the same statement about 9/11 – that God had withdrawn divine protection from America because of all of our fallen morality.
Is your “love” motivated by your fear of God?
4. Do you desire reward from God?
Do you, even subconsciously, connect the life of faith with God’s “rewards” for service? (Is God more likely to “hear” the prayers of a Christian than a Jew? A “good Christian” than a nominal one? A theist more than an atheist?
Is your “love” motivated by a desire for God’s favor?
5. For many people, being Christian (or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist, etc…) has to do with going to “heaven” when we die. It has to do with the reward that we earn from “keeping the faith.” But Jesus teaches that only the one who “loses his/her life for my sake will keep it.” This is a dangerous proposition, frightening especially for those of us who were raised in this religious culture.
Could you “give up ‘heaven’” for the sake of gaining true life?
“If I found out today there were no heaven and no hell, I would still be a Christian…”
-- Anthony Campollo, Evangelical Christian writer and speaker
The saint told his companions of having a vision of a woman carrying a pitcher and a torch. "Why these things," he was asked by one of his friends. Bernard said that "With the pitcher she would quench the fires of hell." Then he added, "With the torch she would burn the pleasures of heaven."
-- St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Founder of Roman Catholic Benedictine Order
Imagine there's no Heaven /
It's easy if you try / No Hell below us / Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people / Living for today ...
Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for
/ And no religion too
Imagine all the people / Living life in peace ...
-- John Lennon, “Imagine,” 1971
6. From the sermon: I am convinced that this love must begin in deep, full humility, and when it does, it will end with the “unmotivated, unmanipulated, unconditional, unlimited”[2] practical love which is ours to know through the life and death of Jesus Christ. It is love, which, alongside secular and civic groups reaches out in simple deeds and kind words. Love, which, at work alongside Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Jews, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits the sick. Love, which, alongside even the atheist continues to incarnate God in this world.
Is it threatening to consider the work of the civic club, the Muslim, the atheist as just as practically effective as that of the Christian? If so, what is at stake for us in maintaining a “superiority” of our love over their love?
7. How do you love God?
PRAYER OF CONFESSION: Forgive us, O God, when our love for you is no more than fear of some divine punishment. Forgive us, O God, when our love for you is no more than selfish desire for some divine favor. In your grace, O God, free us to live for the sake of life. (Because life is it’s own reason.) To hope for the sake of hope. (Because hope is it’s own purpose.) To love for the sake of love. (Because love is always enough.) For faith, hope and love abide...and the greatest of these is love. Amen. (from I Corinthians 13)