Rick Booye

Art is creative material use of the imagination.  That is, it is the extension into material reality of human thought in the form of music, sculpture, design, drawing/painting and so forth.  It takes abstract ideas of beauty and form and materializes them for others to view, hear, enjoy, critique, absorb and consider.  Art comes from the imagination, which is the God-given capacity to visualize something before it takes material shape or form.  Only two beings in the universe make art: God (his art is called creation) and His primary artistic expression—humans. (Yes, humans are works of art, God’s art). No other creatures (including angels as far as we can tell) make art.  Art among humans is an amazing evidence for God’s existence.  It is a pointer to a sort of creativity that inexplicable apart from the existence of a creative God.

Critiquing art is crucial to its usefulness because good art not only conveys beauty, but also incites meaningful thought, which in turn almost always creates some controversy.  That is not so say that “controversial art” is always good, but that good art makes people think about important things; and people often disagree about the most important things.

Art conveys and/or challenges worldviews, too.  Like fiction writing, art of all kinds has a subtext, a meaning intended or assumed by the artist.  This is true even of art that conveys a sense of random meaninglessness, lacking classic beauty or symmetry.  Abstract art is a statement of worldview, often of despair.  But that itself is a philosophical (existentialist or nihilist) worldview.  On the other end of the spectrum, who can take in Thomas Kinkaid’s work without sensing the deep peace, tranquility and intuitive creational beauty that seem to be the subtext of his work?  We know now that Kinkaid’s personal life was not as tranquil as his paintings, yet the yearning for warmth and meaning remains, does it not?  His pieces are not usually overtly Christian in the classic sacred genre (though he does put a lot of churches in his scenes), yet they convey a warmth that strikes an intuitive chord, a chord that sounds like the universe should make sense, should be safe.  That intuition is crucial to the Christian worldview because that is God’s final plan for the redeemed universe.  Art critics slam Kinkaid for his sentimental feel, but people want to know something good is happening somewhere, even if not in their own life at the moment.

This worldview aspect of art is why Christian art should not be limited to classic, explicit portrayals of Christian themes such as pictures of Jesus, the disciples and so on.  These are fine in their own way, but Christians should also be producing art that, while not explicitly “sacred” in its overt structure, is nevertheless prompting thought that might do one of two things: 1) subvert the reigning worldview (be it spiritistic or naturalistic); 2) advance a biblical worldview, one that shows deeper meaning, touching material reality with a transcendent reality, conveying love, compassion, forgiveness, grace and so on.  Art that makes people question naturalism or think about creation or beauty from a theistic worldview may not look Christian (read “churchy”) on the surface, but it communicates at an intuitive level, tilling the emotional soil and creating an environment where gospel reality might penetrate. 

For example, I read not long ago (but I can’t remember where) that there is a powerful purveyor of the Christian worldview (note: not always the gospel itself, but the worldview that assumes the truth of the gospel) in American culture not found in church or Christian publications.  It is Country Music. That’s right, Country Music.  There are a lot of Christians in that industry, yes, but whether the artist is a Christian or not, the basic underlying worldview in almost all Country music, the assumed priority and meaning structure, the shape of the morality (or immorality), the understanding of good and bad, virtue and vice, is grounded in a Christian worldview.  Country music artists do not write existentialist, nihilist, spiritist, or postmodern lyrics.  Blues writers may; Jazz writers may; and Head Bangers, Alternatives and Rock and Roll artists often do—but not Country singers.  Even when the music is sad, corny, funny, angry, or immoral, the basic ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice that underlie the lyrics are all informed by the existence of a real God, the biblical God.  Furthermore, the vice/virtue tensions in the music always reflect biblical ethics, even when the singer is siding with the vice in question (alcoholism and philandering are favorites).

            So art communicates at the intuitive level.  In a world desperate for better intuitions than those on offer from naturalism (we’re grown up germs, accidental blips on the vast, dark, lifeless screen of the universe), any art that prompts hope will be welcome.  Christians who do art for the purpose of revealing God’s thoughts about his universe, and specifically his own work of art—humanity—have their work cut out for them.  And we need more of them.  Tim Keller highlights the need for musicians:

“The Church needs artists because without art we cannot reach the world. The simple fact is that the imagination ‘gets you,’ even when your reason is completely against the idea of God. “Imagination communicates,” as Arthur Danto says, “indefinable but inescapable truth.” Those who read a book or listen to music expose themselves to that inescapable truth. There is a sort of schizophrenia that occurs if you are listening to Bach and you hear the glory of God and yet your mind says there is no God and there is no meaning. You are committed to believing nothing means anything and yet the music comes in and takes you over with your imagination. When you listen to great music, you can’t believe life is meaningless. Your heart knows what your mind is denying. We need Christian artists because we are never going to reach the world without great Christian art to go with great Christian talk.”[1]

What Keller points out about music is true of all art forms.  Good art presupposes (unconsciously?) a Christian worldview, that is a worldview in which beauty, virtue, love, and relationship have ultimate value.  Danto’s insight about “indefinable but inescapable truth” is on point.  Christian artists can help people define the inescapable truth of God’s presence by focusing the imagination and the intuition of their audiences on something other than the Self.  This subverts the nihilism of our pluralistic culture, while presenting to the heart the only alternative that offers real hope—the Lord, the Ultimate Artist.

By Rick Booye

 I pray … that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you may know the hope to which he has called you …

Eph.1:18

 Imagination and intuition are two universal and crucial human capacities (created in God’s image) by which we perceive things that we are not necessarily looking at with our physical eyes.  They are aspects of knowledge, of knowing reality.  They are ways in which we “see the invisible” and so they relate intimately to what we call faith.  They get short shrift in most churches, but are words we should add to our vocabularies, especially in preaching.

Imagination

Imagination is the ability to bring into our minds things that are not present to our visual senses.[1]  These things, events, states of affairs, or actions, either have happened in our absence (in the past), or have not happened yet (in the future), or are currently happening in a different material location, but we can mentally visualize them happening, or “being.”  Because our imagining of things often turns out not to be precise or accurate, we usually associate the term imagination with fiction, so that when we say that a person is “imagining things” we mean that the things they are keeping or creating in their minds are not real—never have been, never will be.  But our imagination is not necessarily or innately inaccurate.  In other words, it doesn’t have to be untrue to reality.  If we are imagining something we have actually experienced, like snow skiing for instance, our imagination of the event might be very accurate and precise indeed, right down to the icy wind on our face and the feel of the crunching snow under the sharp ski edges as we schuss down the slope.  So, fiction is not the only way to use imagination, and in fact is not the most common creative way we use it. 

Imagination is the mental tool we use to do pretty much everything.  When I plan a road trip, even on a familiar route, my imagination almost instantly produces a picture in my mind of the road, the various turns and stop lights, crossroads, and the final destination.  It calculates the time, includes my sense of being in the car, listening to the stereo, sipping a Starbucks drip with no room.  All I have to do is do it, to fulfill what my imagination provided.  It doesn’t make me mistrust my mind if sometimes there is an unforeseen detour or delay on the road.  I know that my imagination is not perfect or flawless.  But I trust it enough (intuitively) to get in the car and put my foot on the gas.   If my imagination did not or could not supply the picture for my road trip, I would be unlikely to start it at all, for fear of the unforeseen. 

When a skilled person produces a piece of art, it begins in her imagination.  She then exercises material energy (painting, sculpting, drawing) to bring the imagined entity into physical reality.  We all imagine this way.  I am right now imagining what I will do when I finish writing this paragraph; in addition to how the writing will potentially look in the larger work I am creating for publication.  The thing isn’t done yet.  But I am seeing it done in my mind’s eye.  If this were not so, I couldn’t sit down and type a word.  Writer’s block, the bane of an author’s existence, is essentially a (hopefully momentary) failure of imagination, a blank spot on the mental DVD. 

When an architect plans a building, right down to what sorts of fasteners he will use, his imagination is working.  He visualizes the entire project, piece by piece at first, but eventually the thing is so clear in his mind that he can make a scale model of it to show to the people whose money he hopes to use to build it.  We would be veggies without our imaginations.  We are the high order of being that we are because of our ability to imagine, like our Creator.

God gave us the gift of imagination because he has it in perfect, infinite measure and power, and it is such a profound pleasure to create good things, especially for others, that he determined to share the power with us.  He knows how to hold something in his mind and then bring it into existence in a way that we can only … imagine.  We imagine and create in the material world by moving our hands, putting together material stuff, then building, shaping, sculpting, writing, painting, gluing, fixing, planting, watering, fertilizing, harvesting, until the thing is before us and available to others for their admiration and appreciation (which we sincerely hope for).  God does this by simply expressing his mind—speaking his Word.  So, Genesis 1 tells us that God “said” things into existence and experienced the intense pleasure of seeing that, of course, they were all “good, good, very good.”  The intense pleasure of creating good is so profound, so much a part of God’s own excellent life, that the creatures he created in his image simply must have it.  And we do.  Though we use our imaginations now for all sorts of evil things. 

All of our human imaginings find their source in our experience of the world around us (including our physical experiences, educational input, reading, and so on), mixed with our mental ability to “re-arrange” the imagined material.  We do not have the capacity to create images ex-nihilo, that is to imagine things that are totally foreign to our experience in every way. Which is why we cannot rightly “image” God’s person by using things from the created order.  “No images!” He insists (Ex 20:4; Deut. 5:8).   Neither can we very clearly imagine the realm he created called “the heavens” or the one he will create, the renovated New Heavens and New Earth that he has been designing all this time (John 14:1-2; 1 Cor. 13:12; Isa. 65:17; Rev. 21:1).  He uses symbols and apocalyptic imagery to seed our thoughts, teaching us to trust that what he has planned will be infinitely beyond what we can imagine (Eph. 3:20).  We use not infinite, creative energy, but our finite experiences, knowledge (including intuition), observations, learned skills, and combined energies, to imagine and create. 

Therefore, the ideas and images that inform us will set the course of our energy, our creative effort—and in fact, our destiny.  This is why God insists that we set our minds on him and let his word inform our imaginations.  This is the skill of meditation (Josh. 1:8; Pss. 1:1-4; Phil. 4:8; Col. 3:3).  In the case of the New Creation, we can meditate on the word of God regarding what he has said about it, in light of what he has created in this current vast universe.  If he created this, and even in its unfriendly state (any part of the universe can kill us in any number of ways) it is beautiful and fascinating, we should imagine a new universe in which goodness is the reality and danger never mars beauty.  In fact, judging by the fact that he speaks often of the wonders we cannot see, it seems he wants us to exercise our Scripture-informed imaginations deliberately to enhance our perception of his reality.  Oswald Chambers wrote,

“Is your imagination stayed on God or is it starved?  The starvation of the imagination is one of the most fruitful sources of exhaustion and sapping in a worker’s life.  If you have never used your imagination to put yourself before God, begin to do it now.  It is no use waiting for God to come; you must put your imagination away from the face of idols and look unto Him and be saved.  Imagination is the greatest gift God has given us and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him.  If you have been bringing every thought captive to obedience to Christ, it will be one of the greatest assets to faith when the time of trial comes, because your faith and the Spirit of God will work together.”[2]

However, in our fallen state, our imaginations are infected, deformed so to speak (Mark 7:20-23; Rom. 3:9-18; 7:13-25).  When we let our minds go they usually run to some form of evil, do they not?  Dark fantasies are the seepage of infected imaginations.  There are lust (epithumia) fantasies, anger fantasies, fear fantasies and so on.  When we set our minds on this age, ourselves, this world, to the exclusion of God, we use our imaginations in some terrible ways.  Look at the evil that we have created in the fictional worlds of media, movies, novels, music, computer graphics, and so on.  Witness the horror, the radically violent and immoral fantasies that bubble out of the entertainment industry like so much sludge from a failed septic system.  A computer researcher once told me that what fueled the expensive early research and development of VHS technology was pornography.  People were willing to pay huge prices to view porn in the secrecy of their own homes.  This is not the fault of the media itself.  Many people create beauty and blessing using film, literature, music, and computer technology.  But it does speak to the heart of humanity.  If half a tree produces good fruit, and the other half produces poison, what would we have to say about the tree?  Something is wrong (Matt. 7:16-20).  And something is wrong with the human imagination that only God’s regenerating grace can heal. 

Enter the gospel and the renewed mind resting on the invisible realities of the kingdom (Col. 3:1-5).

None of the rulers of this age understood this [the wisdom from God, the gospel], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.  But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him—“

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.  For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?  So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.  Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.  And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Cor. 2:8-13 ESV)

Human imagination can be healed and shaped by the Spirit to comprehend what the Lord has planned for his people.  We do not see it with our physical eyes, but with a regenerate imagination we can dwell on God’s reality and Christ’s presence in a way that grants certainty of future blessing even without precision of detail (1 Cor. 13:12). 

Though you have not seen him, you love him.  Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Pet. 1:8-9 ESV).

Imagination, then, for a Christian, is not primarily a tool of fiction, but of faith.  If it is informed by the gospel and the witness of God’s word, it becomes a powerful aid to Spiritual knowledge and intuition.

Intuition

Intuition is an assurance or certainty of something not necessarily based on empirical cognition[3]  It is the internal sense that a particular course of action or item of knowledge is true, right, appropriate, or correct without needing immediate empirical data.   Intuition is more than a hunch or guess.  It is a form of knowing that is spontaneous, often but not always based on experience, and usually correct (We have a different word for things that come to mind and turn out routinely to be false: delusions.)  Philosophers J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig give the following useful definition of intuition:

“While philosophers differ over a precise definition of intuitions, a common usage defines an intuition as an immediate, direct awareness or acquaintance with something.  An intuition is a mode of awareness—sensory, intellectual or otherwise—in which something seems or appears to be directly present to one’s consciousness.

Intuitions are not infallible, but they are prima facie justified.  That is, if one carefully reflects on something, and a certain viewpoint intuitively seems to be true, then one is justified in believing that viewpoint in the absence of overriding counterarguments (which ultimately rely on alternative intuitions).  Furthermore, an appeal to intuitions does not rule out the use of additional arguments that add further support to that appeal.”[4]

In other words, intuition is a very important sort of knowing that all people do.  I am suggesting that faith is intimately associated with intuition.  It is a way of perceiving that is informed by various means, but not reliant on immediate sight.  Most of us understand “mother’s intuition,” by which we mean Mom’s sense that something needs to be trusted, done, avoided, provided, or otherwise experienced, when in fact there is no compelling empirical reason at hand.  But because Mom “just knows,” she turns out to be right most of the time, and even when she’s wrong, she’s not usually that wrong.  The same may be said for other fields of endeavor besides parenting.  I once heard a man question a business leader about a decision he made that seemed not to be based on the empirical data at hand.  He asked, “What’s that, just your feeling, your hunch?”   The leader responded, “Well, isn’t that really what you pay me for, my intuition in situations like these?  If it’s not, what do you pay me for?”  Good point.

Truth be told, most people make most of their decisions intuitively, even when they claim not to.  A hardnosed empiricist might insist that he never makes decisions on feelings, only on facts.  But a further question will reveal that the reason he makes his decisions this way is primarily because he feels strongly that this is the way to avoid the most mistakes.  Human beings are intuitive by nature.  God created us in his image and all of his knowledge is what we would call intuitive.  That is, it is immediately available to him without his having to “learn” it, figure it out, remember it, or test the theory to see if it works.  God’s knowledge is perfect, eternal, infinite, factual, true, exhaustive, and immediately intuitive to him in totality and at all times.[5]  People accustomed to God’s presence have always known this about him.  The Psalmist reminds us, “ Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.”  (Ps 147:5 NASB) and John the apostle says, “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”  (1 John 3:20 NIV)

The Lord gave us the gift of intuition in a limited (and in this age, fallible) way; and we are happiest when we use it successfully and rightly.  It is a way of “seeing the invisible” in that it senses and “intuits” rather than simply watching and cogitating.  Though intuition is not opposed to “thinking through things,” and in fact should welcome additional reliable insight, it offers a way of knowing that is particularly easy, natural and pleasing to us.  If you have ever “just done the right thing without thinking” and found afterward that it was excellent, productive, and rewarded, you have had the feeling of a successful intuition.  God created us to live this way all the time and redeemed people will live this way in the next age with unerring goodness and positive effect. 

Meanwhile, our intuition can be nourished, shaped and developed.  It is the “inner man,” the “circumcised heart” that responds to God’s word.  When the expression of the Lord’s mind (his Word) remains in our mind over time (John 15:7), it shapes the intuitions within the heart.  The result is an increase of “natural” responses to life that “just happen” to be very like what Jesus would do if he were in the situation you find yourself in.  On the other hand, if other ways of thinking “abide” in one’s mind, the intuitions take on a different shape.  For instance, a person steeped in sexual immorality has certain intuitions about how to approach the opposite gender (or in some cases the same gender).  They find that seducing and being seduced just “comes naturally” to them.  A cheater finds ways and means to cheat, a liar to lie, and so on.  This is intuition trained in particular way, the result of long-term, deliberate, imaginative meditation on evil themes, possibly coupled with various other visual or auditory stimuli.  

As with imagination, so with intuition.  God intends to shape it by his Spirit and his Word.  This is in large part what takes place in what we call spiritual transformation.  The Master molds our mental and volitional habits and intuitions to be like his (Mtt. 11:29-30; 28:18-20; Rom. 12:1-2; Gal. 4:19).  Pastoral work happens in this venue.

Pastors must teach the Word in a way that speaks to people’s imaginations and intuitions.  The Spirit takes the Word-made-text and reveals the Word-made-flesh in the souls/minds/hearts of the people who hear the Lord’s voice (Jn.10:27; 15:7).  It happens slowly, over time, and is always imbedded in the experiences (especially sorrow) of life in this age. 

Seeing the invisible, living by faith and not by sight, opening the eyes of our heart, all involve our imagination and our intuition.  From time to time we should ask ourselves the condition of our “inner person” with regard to these things.  What is shaping our imagination these days?  How is our intuition growing in Spirit-guided ways?  What is the role of meditation on God’s Word in these things?

A brief review by Rick Booye

 The theological novel, The Shack, by William (Paul) Young, is still making the rounds and causing sometimes heated discussion for a simple reason—it imagines God’s personal identity in a way nobody would guess by studying the Bible.  This means that despite disclaimers, Paul Young is saying something theological to his readers.  A novel in which people talk to God, who is personified in the plot as an actual player in the story, is saying something about who God is.  That is theology and it carries an implicit claim to authority, a challenge if you will, whether the author admits it or not.  In other words, it’s not just a story.

 In The Shack, Young essentially “incarnates” the Father and the Spirit, not to mention the mysterious “Sophia” figure (all as women as it turns out) as they interact with a grieving man (Mack).  The God/gender thing bothers people.  It is true that God has no gender in the human sense of that term.  In order to have gender one must have a human body, whereas God is pure spirit.  So both feminine and masculine traits are present in God.  He created male and female both in His image and together they represent his life.  On the other hand, we need to be careful to represent him in the way he represents himself in Scripture or we run the risk of violating something very important—the second commandment—which forbids us to create anything physical to visually represent him.  In Scripture the Lord uses masculine imagery and pronouns to describe himself and we should, too.  But he specifically tells us not to imagine or make any image of him.  The reason is that God was intending to become human in one man—Christ—who would be the one and only “image” of God that we should focus on (John 1:1-18; 14:6-11; Heb.1:1-3).  So, when we “imagine” God, we should do so by thinking of Jesus Christ.  By portraying the Father (‘Papa’ he/she is called in The Shack) as a great, jolly black Mom and the Holy Spirit as a diminutive Asian woman, Young deliberately tweaks the biblical revelation of who God is.  The “tweaking” is not simply about gender, however.  It is about the “incarnational” issue. 

 The problem is not that we should not imagine God as a woman; it is that we should not imagine him as a human.  In our efforts to think of the Lord in “more” personal terms we need to stop “re-imagining” God the Father and the Holy Spirit as humans.  The same problem presents when Morgan Freeman appears as God in the movie Bruce Almighty, (Universal Pictures, 2003) or George Burns portrays the cigar smoking deity in Oh God! (Warner Brothers Pictures 1977).  Even Michelangelo’s imagery on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel makes God look like an old man (albeit a pretty buff old man). Yes, these stories and images try to get us to relate to God personally, but they are completely wrongheaded (not least because many of them have nothing to do with the gospel or Christ).  God is a Person with a Name and has become a human in Christ.  These fictional portrayals of God imply that people can relate to him without Christ, which is the opposite of the gospel. (None of the “God” movies include Jesus as the incarnation of God, the only way to relate to God on a personal level; and even in The Shack Mack meets Christ after he meets “Papa.”) 

 Something else that bothers me about The Shack is the fact that the gospel is not highlighted (it is sort of footnoted) and Jesus isn’t the main figure, the cosmic, sacrificial, world-changing hero, as the New Testament presents him.  In the Bible the gospel is the astounding good news that God became human in Jesus Christ, who is the real star of the show.  He is the divine/human Lord of the universe, the one and only material image of God, who died and rose and will return, and who right now rules the entire cosmos, offering in His name the forgiveness of sins and membership in His Kingdom.  He is also the coming Judge of humanity who will renovate the universe and rule it personally and graciously forever (a theme conspicuous by its absence in The Shack, but very obvious in the New Testament). In the gospel the Lord Jesus introduces us to God the Father, not the other way around.  In The Shack these things are blurry and seem almost inverted, which means that the gospel in The Shack is at best obscure, and at worst absent.  After reading The Shack, a person might have a warm feeling about God in general and even a sense of the “three-ness” of God, but one would not exclaim with Thomas, about Jesus,  “My Lord and My God.” (John 20:27-29).  One would not be awestruck with who Christ is, what He did to bring us into his eternal love, and how we didn’t deserve it.  In fact, one might not want to become “a Christian” at all according to Jesus himself in the story (speaking of hypocritical Christianity I guess, but that is not evident in the dialogue).  Many people who like this book treat it as a form of good news (gospel) about God, yet the gospel itself (the one presented in four long documents and many smaller letters in the New Testament) is only faintly present.

 On a positive note, though, one of the main aspects of the gospel of Christ is highlighted in The Shack. This is the story’s strongest point.  It shows God personally overriding human evil and pain in this world in a very graphic way, while gently and compassionately rebuking Mack for not grasping how loving and powerful the Lord is.  I think this aspect of the book is challenging, comforting and insightful.  Among scholars this is called theodicy, defending God’s love and power in light of the agonizing sorrow in this age, explaining how evil can temporarily exist in his world and how the Lord can and will turn it around for eternal good.  The Shack is a theodicy of sorts.  Young dramatizes how God could use even terribly violent and sorrowful things to bring long-term blessing to his people (which is precisely what the Bible says he does through the gospel, the cross/resurrection itself being the main paradigm).  Along the way, Young emphasizes the love, joy, wisdom, compassion, personality, and active involvement that God offers to us.  This is good, too.  Folks who find comfort in The Shack usually find it here, and I do not intend to deny that comfort for a minute.  Young is right to remind us poignantly how sovereign, providential, good and loving the Lord is in spite of how evil our age is.

 Remember, The Shack is “theological fiction,” a genre that, when you think about it, seems odd in itself.  So, eat the meat and spit out the bones.  For a more serious look at how God reveals himself to broken humanity read the four gospels starting with John.

Love: A Meditation on Reality

By Rick Booye

The greatest commandment in the Law is to love God with all you’ve got, and love the people around you the same way you love yourself.  Everything else in the Law hangs on these two ideas.

–Jesus  

I am giving you a new command.  You absolutely must love each other.  I want you to do this in the same way I have loved you.  This is how people will know that you belong to me and are my apprentices, part of my kingdom, my family.  They will know because you love each other.

  –Jesus

If I speak in tongues so impressively that angels listen in on my prayer time, but do not have love—I am nothing but a noise-maker.  If I have all the Holy Spirit gifts and power you can imagine, speaking God’s direct Word, comprehending all mysterious spiritual Truth, possessing so much faith that I can literally move mountains by speaking to them, but do not have love—I am nothing.  If I am the most selfless, giving, sacrificial person you have ever heard of, giving away all my substance to the poor and throwing myself on a grenade for my friends, but do not have love—I gain nothing.

–Saint Paul, apprentice and servant of Jesus

People who claim to know God, yet hate other people, simply don’t get God at all.  God actually is Love in Person.

–Saint John, apprentice and servant of Jesus

If you really get what the Royal Command is, you will love the people around you like you love yourself.

–Saint James, apprentice and servant of Jesus

Since you have cleaned your souls completely by grasping and living in the Ultimate Truth, deciding in that realization to love each other, keep loving each other from your deepest inner being.

–Saint Peter, apprentice and servant of Jesus

 Love is a way of knowing and living that is eternal and foundational to the universe.  To not understand it is to be ignorant of something that is essential, like addition and subtraction or language.  In fact, Paul says that if one does not love, one’s “knowledge” (if you can call it that) is empty, meaningless and useless (1 Cor. 13:1-7).  In philosophical terms, love is its own existential epistemology (sorry for the big words).  That means when we experience love in a relationship, it changes our knowing somehow.  When we love (existential) it adds to or clarifies or in some way alters what and how we know (epistemology).  This is true despite the fact that many people do not grasp it.  When you love someone the love you feel alters how you perceive everything they say and do, which in turn changes your own knowledge structure in various ways.  This then alters your internal life, and you can feel it if you know how.  Have you ever thought a person completely wrong until you got to know them?  Once you came to appreciate them as a person, loving them to some extent, you began to understand what they were saying in a new way, and perhaps you began to change your mind about their point of view and yours.  Or, have you ever been certain that a particular idea or concept was stupid or mistaken, then discovered that someone you love and respect (these go together) believed it?  Didn’t it make you take a second look at the idea? 

It doesn’t always feel this way of course.  We can love a person deeply and disagree with them, even believe they are flat wrong about something.  In fact this is a necessary virtue in our fallen world, the ability to love somebody while disagreeing with them.  But it is not fun or pleasurable to do this.  And in order to make it work we must admit, assume, or pretend (three distinct and different mental processes) that the thing we disagree on is not as important as the love we have for each other—or we must make a huge personal sacrifice to express love to them.  If the thing we disagree on is to us an ultimate thing, more important than our love, the relationship to that extent suffers, sometimes beyond repair (I know of Christian brothers and sisters who loved each other deeply until they discovered that they voted for different presidential candidates, at which time the “Christian love” dissipated completely).  We humans would much rather agree on what is good and right, experiencing love in that context, the context of unity (Eph. 4:1-6).  This is because to be complete love must entail unity at a very deep, truthful, spiritual level, where the foundational convictions of life form the mental and emotional structure of our character.  When this love/unity matrix permeates one’s life and relationships, there is a deep joy, a profound peace.  This is the way God is, and the way we will be someday because of what he has done at the cross. 

All of this is part of the gospel.  It is why, in order for us to love and be loved truly by the Lord, in order for us to know him and be known by him at that deep level, the evil in our nature and actions must be dealt with.  In order for that to happen he had to love us more than we loved him, and die to remove the enmity caused by our sin.  He had to make the supreme sacrifice to heal our broken relationship (2 Cor. 5:21).  It is also why Jesus, the Master of Life, insists that we find our highest value, our supreme Reality, in him and his kingdom (Matt. 6:33) rather than in anything, any relationship, any priority that finds its rootage only in this age.  The priorities of this age cannot unify us and provide the ground of our eternal love for each other.  We will fight over money, prestige, personal fulfillment, politics, sex, ambition and any number of related issues when they become more important to us than the Lord and living his kingdom reality (see Jas.3:13-18).

Love is intuitive, but not less factual for that.  Love in fact, is a fact.  John Frame has written that there comes a point in all knowledge where mystery reveals its presence in our thinking and must be accepted as mystery rather than justified or explained.  At that point, when asked why we “know” something, we must respond simply with the intuition—I just do.[1]  The chain of justification cannot go on infinitely.  When we ask why we know something, we may offer some evidence or some authority, who in turn offers some evidence.  But ultimately we simply know and trust at a deep intuitive level.  When God in Christ is in us at that deep level his love permeates us.  This is the main thesis of St. John’s first letter.

Love is part of the actual structure of the universe, the “is-ness” of Reality, the ontology of the cosmos (the “being-ness” of all that is).  It is deeper in the universe than physics because it existed in the Trinity in eternity past, before there was what we call matter, space or time.  The reasoning that leads us here is theological rather than philosophical or “scientific.”  God is the Creator and sustainer of the universe (Gen.1:1; Heb. 1:1-3), and he is love (1 John 4:7-8).  As the Three in One, he has always loved in unity and perfection.  Augustine pointed out that even if we knew nothing of the Trinity (the tri-personality of God) we would need to postulate some sort of multi-personality in him based on John’s statement that God is Love.  For love to exist at all there must be more than one person.  This being the case, we should  understand the cosmos as a relational matrix before we consider it as a material reality, which is why love and loyalty are intuitively more important to us than quantum physics and general relativity.  On your death bed you will not regret failing to plumb the depths of superstring theory (a current idea in physics about how the universe works).  But you may regret not spending time with your family.  Why?  Because in some way we cannot measure the universe runs on love and loyalty, not just molecules and motion.  And that love and loyalty begins with a reconciled relationship with the One from whose Mind the entire universe came and who sustains it all at all times.

The gospel is the news that the ultimate relationship we need with the Author of all Reality has been healed by God himself in Christ, the king of loving Reality (2 Cor. 5:16-21).  The love he has for us (even while we were enemies) is the standard power and the very life force of our never-ending experience with him and each other.  This is why in this age loving is a command (John 13:34), forgiveness is not an option (Matt. 6:14-15; 18:35), God’s deep eternal affection for us flows in and through Christ (Rom. 8:38), and the greatest of all eternal, cosmic, mysterious forces is … Love (1 Cor. 13:8-13).

All of this sounds a bit odd to our ears, doesn’t it?  Perhaps this is because we don’t think of love as a hard science, a serious discipline like say, microbiology or astrophysics, or plumbing.  Neither do we consider it an acquired skill worth the effort to learn, like sewing, art, accounting, counseling, first aid, firefighting, or cooking.  Our culture does not consider love a crucial, serious, factual, practical peace of knowledge about reality.  To us it is a fleeting feeling, something we fall into (and out of), a gentle, desirable, uncontrollable sentiment rather than a firm fact of practical life.  When our kids ask about how the world works, we do not think of sitting them down for a sobering chat about the Facts of Love.  There are no college courses devoted solely to it, even in Christian institutions.  In our culture it is a value rather than a fact, which is to say it is good in a way, but not necessary to progress, wisdom, knowledge, culture, art, or success in life.  If it were, there would be courses, seminars, whole departments devoted to its development.  You could get a Master’s degree in it, or a Ph.D.  It would have cash value. 

This is not to say that we ignore love.  Far from it.  We write songs about it, which are mostly sentimental (not to say sappy), and put it into most movies, where it usually takes the shape of romance.  And (oddly) we honor the willingness to kill and/or die for it at times.  These intuitions we all seem to share about the importance of love force their way to the surface in our prayers, tears, anger, struggles, and relational traumas.   We sense how crucial love is to life at one level.  But when we need to discuss facts, figures, or the elements of “hard reality,” which become practical wisdom, how to get ahead, make a living, deal with the world, we send love into the other room while the grownups talk, right? 

This is especially the case among men, who can appreciate love, especially when it is coming their way in the form of romance or home life, but who would not usually put love at the top of their list of manly traits, things they work hard at and sacrifice for, like muscle, power, intellect, or wealth.  There are no cable shows on how men love, like there are for instance on how they fight.  FX doesn’t have any movies that make men want to become more sacrificial, team up to exercise selflessness under stress, or win great spirit victories by letting themselves be victimized for others (a very Jesus idea).  For many men love is something valuable to protect, by violence if necessary (?).  But unless it is defined as sexual prowess (the opposite of real love), it is not something they long to be really good at.

But this is not how Jesus sees things.  Which means it is not how God sees things.  Which means it is not how things really are.  Which means our view is out of phase with the ultimate power in the universe.  No wonder life flounders in our world.  Most of us are pitiably, disastrously wrong in our notions about love.  The same is true, by the way, about faith and hope, the other two divine realities that Paul says are eternal and foundational to understanding life (1 Cor. 13:13).  Faith in our world usually means the absence of and/or rejection of knowledge, understanding, expertise (precisely the opposite of what the Bible means by it).  Hope usually means wishful thinking (again, the opposite of what God means by it).  And Love usually means sensuality, sexuality, or sentimentality (so far out on the fringes of the biblical meaning that it renders the word useless).

So, what is God doing in this age, in his kingdom purpose, in the personal attention he gives to our lives and character as Christians?  He is teaching us to love, truthfully, sacrificially, against the odds, in all our relationships beginning with the most intimate, by using forgiveness as power, patience as skill, and prayer as an antidote for the hate fantasies that dominate our angry minds at times (1 Tim.1:5).  Spiritual warfare focuses on stopping us from loving each other and those around us and thus taking our thoughts captive, away from Jesus, his kingdom, his rightness.  We must grasp ever more tightly the reality of Christ’s lordship in the here and how and dare to live out his primary command (John 13:34) even when it seems dark all around and everything in our minds demands we lash out (Ps.37:8).  The deepest reality in the universe is God himself, in Christ.  And the essence of his person is love.  His love is eternal, alive, and will win the day.  We have much to learn.  John 3:16.