11. An Incomplete Understanding of God
For many young people who disconnect from faith and/or faith communities, the reason is an incomplete, or skewed, view of the Triune God.
I need to be super careful how I address this one. Readers need to carefully try to understand what I’m attempting to say.
Many young people disengage from faith or faith communities because they have misunderstood, or been led to misunderstand, the truth that “God is Love”. He is, but we are on dangerous ground when we reduce Him to a single-attribute God.
Undoubtedly, love is a very important attribute of God. John says “God is love”[1], it is A defining quality of God. However, this does not minimize His other qualities. Some people suggest that we must interpret all of God’s attributes in light of His love. In taking this perspective, we impose our limited understanding of love onto God, and recreate Him into our image.
By all means, we should rejoice in God’s mercy and love. But we must also recognize that He is uncompromisingly holy, righteous, and just.
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.”[2]
“The universe exists not for Love’s glory, but for God’s glory.”[3]
A W Tozer points out that when John says, “God is love”, he is not making a definitive and exclusive statement about the nature of God.
“John was by those words stating a fact, but he was not offering a definition.”
If love is equal to God then God is only equal to love, and God and love are identical. Thus, we destroy the concept of personality in God and deny outright all His attributes save one, and that one we substitute for God.
The words “God is love” mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God, but it is not God. It expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness, and truth. Because God is immutable, He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity, He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.[4]
I realise that this might sound a little complex at first reading. Why is this an important point? Because we can inadvertently communicate that “God is love” means that God must fit into our understanding of what love is; He must always be ensuring our comfort and relieving our pain.
It means that when tough situations occur, when we experience harm or pain, when tragedy strikes, we conclude that God has not met our definition of love. Thus, we reject Him as unfair, false, and unworthy of our allegiance.
This is significant and a perspective that we will address later.
Blessings
Brian
[1] 1 John 4:16
[2] Habakkuk 1:13
[3] Eternal Perspectives Blog. Randy Alcorn (2018) https://www.epm.org/blog/2018/Mar/19/love-not-god-aw-tozer
[4] Tozer, A.W., (1978) The Knowledge of the Holy. Harper Collins (p 68)