Witness to Love

So those who suffer according to God's will should, in doing good, entrust themselves to a faithful Creator — 1 Peter 4:19

I'm intrigued by Peter's use of the word 'Creator' rather than 'Father'. God is 'Creator' in regard to all entities and all of existence. He is 'Father' with regard to those who trust in and accept the offer of adoption in Christ.

"Love hurts", and it's not just the passionate love of teenagers with all the drama and breakups. The love between parent and child, husband and wife, and between friends can be painful at times. If we act out of love for others, we tend to think that they will understand and appreciate what we are doing. All too often that isn't the case. We suffer because we feel rejected or under-appreciated. The classic hardworking husband who has been putting in extra hours to provide for his family, though motivated by love, is not immune to being tossed aside for a "more caring" male. A woman who gives her all for her spouse and family may be shocked to learn that her husband has found a "soul mate" at work. It is a wonder that we risk loving at all.

Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law (Romans 13:8). God says to everyone, I don't owe you. I love you. Entitlement is a deadly and demonic state of mind. If you want to understand what the Bible means by "the fear of God" being the beginning of wisdom, a good place to start is simply to think about what is opposite to the attitude of entitlement.

One of the first things a Christian should learn is that he has no "right" to anything. I have no right to heaven. To think that I have a right to grace is a risible contradiction. I have no right to blessings. I am even a little uneasy at the pro-life phrase "right to life". I am alive because God loves me, not because He owes me a life. It's correct and proper to speak of a right to life in a political sense, just as it is true that we are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights" once we arrive on the planet. A Bill of Rights would be a redundancy if everyone loved me as God does. Since all don't and can't or won't, I'll be keeping my God-given political rights — including the one to defend my loved ones, my property, and myself against the thugs and bullies.

We receive grace because we are loved. We will enter heaven because we are loved. God blesses us because He loves us. Forget rights and forget formulas. The proper response to love is to first recognize it, with gratitude, and second to requite it — to love the Other in return. And how do we love God? We follow the admonition of John in his First Epistle. To love the God we cannot see, we love the visible ones around us who are also loved by God.

This is getting sticky for me because I am self-consciously thinking I sound like Thaddeus Golas talking to Captain Stubing. It is true, nonetheless. Romance, while nice, is insufficient. Unless romance and the accompanying eros develop into agape — or better yet are motivated by agape in the first place, we're going to run into problems. Our love boat is likely to run aground or be swamped in the first storm. The engines can't get enough power out of the thin stuff to climb those big waves.

Love has to be vulnerable. We have to risk the pain in order to do God's will. A person doesn't have to be stoned by Islamic fundamentalists to be a martyr. We can find plenty of opportunities to suffer for Christ's sake just by loving the people around us with a self-sacrificing and enduring love, with the same love our Father has for each of us.