THE ONTOLOGY OF LOVE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies earth.

Welcome back. Let's keep thinking about love.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not love God. In my youth, I knew God loved me, but my church taught me that god loved me as long as I obeyed his will. 

It was the eternal, most conditional love ever conceived by god and man.

Then I heard the good news that God loved me unconditionally. To learn that God loved me unconditionally, no matter what, and to hear that there was no longer any condemnation in Christ was truly gospel to a habitual sinner like me.

For me to find out that God loved me more than I loved God--well, one cannot help but receive that news eagerly and with profound relief. I did not think it was possible that God loved me more than I loved god because I loved god despite the terrible things God did to people.

And I was relieved because I could not fathom love for anyone as flawed as I infinitely am. 

Here is where I thought wrongly about God: I used the word “love” as an action verb and God as the subject. This is the ancient false assumption that God is a being who acts on the world. What is the nature of God's being in the world?

Before I continue, I must define a word. Ontology is the study of what is and why what is is what it is. Ontology is the study of being. 

Two Greek words make the one word ontology:  ontos which means "being" and logos which means "study" or "logic." Ontology is the study or logic of being.

God is not a being, not even a Supreme Being. God is the ground of everything that is. God is the answer to the question of why there is something and not nothing.

Being moves and has its being in God. All that is is in God.

The word "God" is not a name. There is no name that identifies God--not even Yahweh since Yahweh has been relegated to a sky god. But the meaning of Yahweh points to the ground of being. Yahweh means, "I am."  It is the best name conceivable for Being-itself.

God is the name we use to point to the source of creation. God is the name we use to point to the being that resists nonbeing. No God means nothing, no being, nihil, nada.  But the possiblity of no God is impossible.

What I am writing may sound theologically deep to some. Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology explains more thoroughly what I seek to condense here.

Were I writing to atheists, I would write differently. I would have to answer to the tautological nature of what I am writing, but that is not a question here. Instead, I turn to the relationship between the ground of being and the Christian concern.

We Christians believe that the ground of everything that is—is love. The nature of God is love. God does not love because God chooses to love in the way one who is a being chooses to love or not love. God loves because God is love.

That God is love was written as a proposition once in the Bible (I John 4:8). It is implied in many other passages.

The statement, "God is love," is the only Christian doctrine that can be true. It is the only doctrine that really matters.

As I live, I must love. I must open myself to God so God can love through my life. Such love has appeared in Jesus the Christ so it can be done.

Many of us do not know what it means to love the way our God of love loves. We who do know might say that love as a goal to be achieved or a prize to be won is not nearly as difficult as having the grace or gift to love as God loves in this world. We manifest love in our choices, desires, and deliberations even as the world resists love from generation to generation.

Faith and hope are more attainable than love. Faith and hope are valued more than God’s love in this power mad world.

So, what does such love look like in a life? 

Blessings…