What's Love Got To Do With It?

Maybe Everything

What’s love got to do with it?  Maybe everything.  In reading Brian McLaren’s book “Faith After Doubt,” for the second time, I recognize the concept of God’s love for me is a hard one.  It is almost as if the “God” I have served for my lifetime is easier to accept.  A “God” who is critical, harsh, judgmental, and cruel.  One that requires so much from me.  The more transactional God.  It is at least more clear-cut.  I do these things to earn God’s approval.  I mean sure there is the residual shame and guilt when I am not living up to my part of the bargain, but after all, shame and guilt are normal and almost comforting in their familiarity.

In listening to the music of “The Many” I hear them sing so confidently about how God’s love is sure.  I find myself dismissing it.  Yeah, I sing along, belting out these ungraspable notions in the privacy of my car, but they are words, nothing more.  Like singing “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” knowing it is a fun idea that I am not expected to understand as a truth.

As I have mentioned, my faith experience is fully entwined with my childhood and family of origin.  So many of the stumbling blocks I have uncovered on my journey through deconstruction are due to the mixed messages I got in childhood.  Messages that have led to a lifetime of distrust. 

My home growing up was full of “I love yous” and physical affection.  We were told over and over how much we were loved.  The problem with this kind of demonstrative love was that so many things happened over the years that did not feel loving.  Through my adult eyes, I can see that many things couched in love were unkind and uncaring.

Often our first understanding of God is in comparison to our earthy father or our earthy parents.  Why am I stuck here?  I still see God through that lens. Only the lens has grown up with me.  I am now at the point where it is nice to believe that God loves me, a nice thought.  I have come to believe that my parents may have thought they were loving my brother and I, but it was always just about them.  It was never about us.  It was what I could do for them, not how they could love and support me.  And this is how I see God.

Thirty-plus years as a pastor’s wife only reinforced this idea.  In ministry is what I could do for the church, what I could do for God.  And the few times I poured my heart out in prayer asking God for something I was left feeling abandoned and betrayed.  It was reminiscent of my parents, it felt like God didn’t care about me and my needs, only what I could do for the kingdom.

The irony of not fully believing that God loves me is that my life has been characterized by love. The love I feel for my husband, choosing him over my family when we eloped.  Loving my children fiercely through so many things that have challenged me.  So, I will keep singing of God’s love, I will keep reading about it.  I will keep trying to separate my earliest church experiences, my family, and my years in ministry from God and see what happens.

I know I am capable of feeling loved because I trust my husband’s love, I trust the love of my children.  I trust the love of my friends, Jon and Ruth.  Knowing this keeps me seeking God’s love even when it seems like nothing more than a nice idea.