All you need is love...

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."
- 1 John 4:7

I'm struck by the thought that no theological system is implied here - those who are born of God are not said to first have mentally assented to dogma or doctrine, to have completed certain rituals, etc. The people who truly, intimately KNOW God are those who LOVE. They are "born of God"... born again. They "get it".

Jesus told his followers, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples - by your love one for another." This was recorded by John (known as the disciple whom Jesus loved... imagine that).

For decades I have participated in religious institutions that were filled with judgment, hatred, racism, condemnation, gossip, harshness, lies, deceit, greed, and worse. In that time Joyce and I have commented on more than one occasion that we have experienced far more love from people outside the walls of that religious assembly than we have from those inside.

Many of the "outsiders" we knew actually loved - and I'm not merely talking about self-centered give-to-get kind of love. No, these people (knowingly or unknowingly) practiced the example of Jesus by self-denial and sacrifice in order to better other peoples' lives. They "got it". And based on the verse above, it seems that they "knew God" in ways that hadn't dawned on me at the time.

Paul wrote, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law."

To "fulfill the law" means to actually get the point; to "abolish the law" conversely means to totally miss the point. Those who love their fellowman "get the point" of the law - it's not a list of things to not do or to do in order to avoid punishment or guarantee prosperity. Rather, the law provides a framework that helps us understand what it means to love each other and bring shalom to our world.

Those who love will be sure to love and honor God first and foremost, respecting him with their time, their bodies, even their tongues. They will honor and bless their parents, the first ones to show them love. They will treat their fellow man in a way that respects their lives, property, bodies, possessions, etc. And beyond the "big 10" there are numerous guidelines that help us understand how to love the poor, the opposite sex, foreigners, animals, victims, criminals, and society at large (as well as how to address situations where to love one party seems to conflict with loving the other party).

All you need is love...
All you need is love...
All you need is love, love...
Love is all you need.

- John Lennon

"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

- Jesus

"Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."

May that be true of me.

Rollins on desire

More from Peter Rollins' book "How to [Not] Speak of God":

Rather than desire being fulfilled in the presence of God, religious desire is BORN there. In short, a true spiritual seeking can be understood as the ultimate sign that one already HAS that which one seeks, or rather, that one is already grasped by that which one seeks to grasp. Consequently a genuine seeking after God is evidence of having found.

Of course, much desire that appears to seek after God is nothing of the sort. For instance, to seek God for eternal life is to seek eternal life, while to seek God for meaningful existence is to seek a meaningful existence. A true seeking after God results from an experience of God which one falls in love with for no reason other than finding God irresistibly lovable. In this way the lovers of God are the ones who are most passionately in search of God.

Thus the emerging community celebrate the centrality of religious desire, acknowledging that it is a necessary part of faith. This approach can help us to appreciate why the psalmist writes, 'those who desire God lack no good thing' and why the Gospels tell us to 'seek first the kingdom'.

I guess that's the point I really want to get to... where I desire God for himself, not for what I think he'll give me (like some magical Santa Claus in the ether). I have a vague intellectual knowledge that he is a beautiful person, supremely smart, overflowing with joy and wonder, unflappable, compassionate, radiating love and welcome and even humor.

I know in my heart that he is all that and more. But instead of relying on other people's description of this mind-boggling being, it's time to begin experiencing him more and more first-hand...