Written By: Chris Barber
As I approach this topic I realize that probably most believers don’t think there is a dichotomy here between truth and love. While it may be the case that in our minds we may feel we understand that truth and love are not opposed to each other the fact is that how we live and interact with people (even as the church) often shows something different. In light of this I believe this is one of the core issues facing the church as a whole today because we don’t mentally see it as a dichotomy but we live and interact with the world and even our loved ones as though it is one.
A starting point to help us realize this is in the context of what many people in our world are saying that love is. Love for many people in our current culture has become synonymous with the word tolerance. The argument is something along the lines of if you love someone you will not question what they do or how they live. In other words acceptance of any and all life styles is required of anyone who loves someone else. This may seem ridiculous to some in the church but their are many churches who have not only agreed but given theological argumentation to back this idea of love up. This is usually done by focusing on loves corollaries of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Now, sense God is love, and their view of love is tolerance, what results is there is no room for evaluation (or judgment) of how a loved one is living. They should be allowed to live the way they choose without a questioning from a loved one. This leads to all sorts of acceptance of sin, license to sin, or not even calling sin as the sin that it is among many churches today. As a result many people are heading in the wrong direction (a direction that leads to their own pain, destruction, and death) with full approval and no warning from the church.
On the other side of the spectrum is those who hold unswervingly to the truth. They will not stray from it for any such nonsense as tolerance and as Christians they insist that we all must be held accountable to the truth. They hold unapologetically to this truth and hold everyone to the standard given to us by God (who is truth himself) and His holy character. An emphasis on this reality that we must be living what amounts to perfect lives is the result and they condemn anyone (often times anyone other than themselves and their own hypocrisy) who does not live in full accordance with every aspect of what they believe to be in line with this truth. They make up rules and have what one might term unwritten rules of how one should act in this world or in their church and hold others unswervingly to it in the name of truth. This leads to all sorts of condemnation and forced guilt to anyone they interact with even (whether they realize it or not) their loved ones cannot escape the guilt, condemnation, and wrath for doing something counter to the truth. As a result masses of people think that the church (if not in its teaching at least in its interactions with the church) is nothing but a big condemnation factory.
So which is it? How should we live and interact with others in love or truth, with grace or upholding our values as believers informed by God himself. The answer from scripture appears to be much less of an either / or but much more of a both/and as they have to be in balance with each other and even informing one another. When we start leaning too far in one way we tend to lose the correct balance, so then we often go to far the other way. You see this in so many different church’s, each one is trying to safe guard from where the other church goes too far but in doing so they often go too far in the other direct. Instead where we need to live is in the middle where truth and love both may abound.
In fact scripture exhorts us to be:
Speaking the truth in love – Ephesians 4:15
and of our ultimate example Jesus Christ it says:
We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
The fact is that truth, does not condemn but rather reveals things as they truly are. The point of telling truth is not to condemn but rather to warn the ones we care about of the reality of the impending danger and consequences if one continues in there error. With this in mind, we could even say it is more loving to speak truth to stave someone off from impending danger than it is for one to allow a loved one to do whatever they want.
For example, let us say a parent sets up a rule for a child not to play in the street. This rule is not there simply because the parent wants the child to live a restricted lifestyle but rather to keep them safe from harm. If the child breaks the rule the parent may discipline the child and warn them of the error because the reality and truth for the child is that playing in the middle of the street is dangerous. In this way love functions not based on what the beloved wants but rather what the beloved most needs. Truth and love are inseparable in this way in that the best love is putting someone’s highest need (in accordance with truth) not only above ones own wants and need but even above the loved one’s own wants and desires.
However, the world is full of parents and good meaning Christians who speak love via truth but to whom the person receiving the truth receives nothing but condemnation. Why is this? Because they were unable to express it in a way that was loving and that showed loves corollaries of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Bare truth without the expression of love, mercy, grace and forgiveness does not end up being God’s truth at all. For bare truth without the expression that mirrors the truth that God is willing to forgive, show mercy and grace, and still love the individual is incomplete. As Kelly Kapic says, “neglect of love… confines theology (and truth) to a pursuit of personal peace, self-improvement, and detached spirituality. God equates this with idolatry (Is 1:21)”[1]. Upholding truth without love typically makes us hypocritical and condemning while lifting one’s self up as if we live in accordance with truth perfectly.
We must learn to express and communicate truth and love together. When someone then sins and truth and love is expressed correctly what is communicated (and hopefully felt) is conviction and an invitation to reconciliation. Now just because we do this does not mean that it will be successful. There are many who may trade the truth in for a lie. Correspondingly, there are many who will falsely take your teaching of truth with love and focus only on the love aspects and take this as a license to sin. Even if that be the case, we can rest assured that if we live and express both truth and love we will be proper representations of Christ. Unfortunately there has been a huge slack in this area and many who may have been drawn to our Lord may have been hindered by either a lack of love on one end of the spectrum or the lack of truth on the other. We must therefore learn to teach and practice truth and love to those around us for in this we can truly reflect God himself and invite those we love into conviction and right relationship with Him!
[1] Kelly Kapic, A Little Book For New Theologians (IVP Academic, 2012), pg. 73.
The Logos of Agape 
“Bare truth without the expression of love, mercy, grace and forgiveness does not end up being God’s truth at all. For bare truth without the expression that mirrors the truth that God is willing to forgive, show mercy and grace, and still love the individual is incomplete.”
Truth is truth. Good news is good news. If you must frame it with expression and tact, it’s actually just bad news. And the gospel is all bad news:
The bare truth is that Christianity tells you to trick God into loving you using Jesus, and if you don’t before you die, God will do the infinitely unloving thing towards you, and you burn in hell forever.
There is no love in this, except what add-ons and marketing and masquearade with manipulative philosophies are used to justify this simple core of the faith, without which your house is built on sand.
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Hey,
I get why you feel this way. A lot of Christianity has gotten it wrong and taught God’s Love to be conditioned on weather or not one believes or not (honestly I believed that way for a while myself). However, this is not an accurate depiction of the Christian God of Love. God’s (Agape) Love is unconditional (which is basically the definition of Agape self sacrificing Love) weather one believes or has faith or not. God loves at all times. I believe I can show this from a Christian perspective and from the Bible itself if you truly wish to see it.
I empathize with you because if I believed God’s love to be conditional I would not believe it to be any kind of real (Agape) Love at all and if God is not Love and Christianity is not truly about unconditional agape Love, I would have left it long ago.
However, I have good news for you if you want it. God loves no matter what (and yes, I mean the Christian God expressed in Jesus). Do you want to know how? I am sure you have some proofs why you think I am wrong. Let’s start there, why do you think the Christian God loves only conditionally? Is there a passage of scripture or Christian teaching you think says otherwise?
I am willing to enter into this and show you how God is perfect Love if you desire to continue the discussion?
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Agape is simply preference or benevolence. Love does not set a deadline to get on my good side before I decide, ‘you know what. f*ck it’ and kick you out of narcotics rehab and toss you a heroin syringe and a spoon and lighter. Love is simply preferential, or at least good, positive intent.
Now, to start with, first I assume that there is nothing more malicious than forcing someone to be immortal, (tuether making them unable to repent or not) and then making them burn in sulfur and undying worms forever with no intent to purge, fix, restitute or pay any sort of debt, or any other purpose or ends. In fact, eternal punishment has no ends, and can never fulfill a purpose, because the torment is the purpose.
But if that doesn’t convince you, then just assume for the same of argument, that such thing is malicious. Malice, active or passive (no reframing it for excuses: ‘letting the hammer fall’ on my toes is actually just ‘dropping the hammer’ on my foot) is the opposite of active preferential benevolence, which is love. That’s how I ultimately define love.
Now Christianity is a set of conditions which you must fill to avoid hell This hell is the expression of Jesus’ infinite malice towards the unbeliever (John 3:18). If this malice is conditional, then the (relatively speaking) love, which precludes this malice, must have a contrary condition, negative or positive. Therefore God’s love is conditional, because God’s malice exists, precludes love, and is also conditional.
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You have a lot of preconceived ideas of what you think I believe and I don’t blame you as before I began to understand Christianity and scriptures from their original Hebrew/Greek context and language I would have, and perhaps you could even say started to, make the same conclusions.
Let’s just gently start with the concept of hell that you keep assuming I as a Christian hold too. First off the concept of hell is hardly mentioned in scriptures. Second, Did you know that the few times it is mentioned it’s 4 different words (Hades, Gehenna, Thymos, and Tartarus) none of which mean the same thing and none of which mean the eternal conscious torment that most of Modern Western Christianity has peddled for the last 700 years or so. That view of hell was not developed till midevil times and was heavily influenced by Dante’s Inferno and not the scriptures in the slightest.
I am not going to go into detail now on those 4 words English authors have opted to translate hell but since none of them mean what we in English mean by hell they should probably not be translated hell at all.
As for the malice you alluded to I am not aware of a translation that calls God a God of malice but I am guessing you are referring to the passages that refer to God’s wrath. However even that is a translation that is poor. The word in Greek is orge (it is the Greek word we get our words order and organize from) it is a word that means to correct someone to put them back into their created purpose for their own good and betterment.
In fact any and all words that speak of God and affliction are words that mean to discipline or correct for their own good and betterment. Therefore they are always done in Agape love.
This can be hard to understand in a great overall schema but I think it helps to understand it from the view of children and parents. Good parents discipline not from anger or malice or vengeance but for the good and betterment of their children to teach their children how to live in a way that does not harm themselves or others but rather to live by the way of love. In the same way God disciplines us to correct us and teach us to love as He loved because to love is to live in God for God is Love (see 1 John 4).
It also helps to understand that this is what we were created for in the first. We were created to live and rule in God’s image (see the end of Genesis 1). Since we now know that God his love we also understand that being created to be his image bearers means we are created to be creatures of love, who love both God and others. This has always been God’s intention and His goal has always been this therefore when we don’t live by love we are in need of correction because to live by love is the only way to find peace in living the way we were intended and by living lives of Love, as God is love we find life to its fullest and flourishing that is only found in love. This then matches up well with what Jesus says was the emotive point of the law and the prophets (to love God and to love others- Matthew 22:36-40).
This may seem foreign to the concept of the Christian God you have heard of and I understand that. As you can tell I think a big part of the problem is our translations. You maybe asking yourself, how could our English translations be so far off. Well luckily I have already created a few blog posts explaining it on this sight. I encourage you to read the posts on translation as it may help to understand how they have gotten so far off in some ways and how incorrect doctrine formed from poor translations have made their way into the church.
I know this is a lot but I wanted to somewhat try my best to address the different issues I was deciphering from your post. I hope this helps and am more than willing to continue the conversation if you desire.
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Suppose you’re right about all of this in spite of many isolated (and some very broad-readhing) counterexamples in the Bible’s language I could fling at your eyes like pocket sand. Riddle me this, then: Is humanity’s bad nature enough of an excuse for the Holy Spirit’s grand failure to lead his flock in this and in unity and in every other good work? If God is in charge of the church, and if you’re right, and Evangelicalism and Romanism are wrong, why does God encourage it? Why does God not give you the Bible’s miracles and take them away from them?
Why do the pedophile priest and the cash-grabbing preacher not drop dead when taking the eucharist?
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I can see there is a lot of bitterness and vitriol on your end and I don’t blame you for this as I very well, could be in the same boat. The truth is, there’s been a lot of evil done in the name of the Christian God and if not in the name of the Christian god, then by people who claim to be led by the Christian god. Not the least of these I believe is the great harm done by the false doctrines of God, taught by the church. These false doctrines then lead to all sorts of atrocities, a few of which you have mentioned in your most recent response.
You seem to be quite familiar with many Christian doctrines from our brief conversation here. I have noticed that you have assumed or at least hinted at a deterministic (or Calvinistic, if you will) view of God. This version of God predetermined all things to happen (both the “good” and the “evil”) in the way that they do in order for Him to receive the at most glory possible. This is a very selfishly motivated God and would literally be the exact opposite of a God who is Love.
If one takes and assumes this view, then I 100% agree with you. There is no way to understand the spirit’s failing to lead the church or the evil acts by priests and Christians. It would be and is (for those who hold it) completely illogical and incoherent and given that this God would be motivated purely out of selfishness would have to be characterized as anti love and could not be characterized as truly loving to any of its creation or creatures (humanity included).
This is because the starting point is something other than love and this is a false doctrine that has been presented in many churches (first peddled by the Neoplatonic “theology” of Augustine).
However, if the starting point is love, meaning the very center of who God is, is truly altruistic, agape love, I think we can understand it the things you have brought forward as objections.
You see, any being that would be capable of love, much less a being who’s very center is love, would desire beings who can and will receive and reciprocate their love. So I believe that God, being love itself, had as his motive love to create all things, and more specifically love as his motivation for creating human beings. Who are called to be his image and likeness (or in other words, beings who can receive his love, and reflect his love both to him and the rest of his creation).
With that as the starting point of what God created man for. I think it’s important to delineate image from likeness. I do follow the line of thinking presented by many church fathers, that, to have the image is to have the ability to choose to love (or in other words to have free will) and then that the likeness is to use that freedom by choosing to act and live out the ways of love like God does.
The image, then being the freedom to be able to love is a prerequisite to being able to be the likeness which is actually acting in the ways of love. So God’s, who is Love, goal in creating humans then is to create other sovereign beings, who like himself, have the sovereign moral freedom and ability, to act in love.
However, anything that has the ability to act in love, must also have the ability to act contrary to love as well. Since the freedom to do good and love is the prerequisite to being able to actually love. I do think CS Lewis does make this point well, when he wrote:
“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata–of creatures that worked like machines–would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”
This, then, is the answer that I would provide for any evil we see in the world, from the first fall of humanity, all the way to the evils you presented in your question. Now you may ask well, “What about the Holy Spirit” as you did your question. The point of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is not to take away, humanities, freewill, but rather to reestablish it and in doing so reestablish the image of God in humanity. Therefore, if the original humans had the ability to choose contrary, to God‘s will for them. So to do the humans who, by the Spirit of God, have the freewill reinstituted
For the record I, nor any church father so far as I am aware, do not believe that the free will or image of God in humanity was dead or destroyed, but rather that it was sick to the point that we could not consistently act in the lovingly, right ways God has written on our hearts.
However, I do believe, as Paul says in Romans 2, that all of us have the law of God (which I would also call the law of love) written on our hearts (which he equates to the conscience) and that any good we do is the result of the drawing of that love/ God on our hearts. However, I also believe that due to the sickness of the image/free will that nobody does it consistently. Therefore, we all have a guilty conscience that I discussed in my last correspondence with you.
It is because none of us consistently obeys the law of love/god written on our hearts that we need the Holy Spirit. However, as I mentioned before, the Holy Spirit merely re-enables the free will/image of God. Therefore, as CS Lewis argued before if we have been freed to do what’s right and loving, we still are free to choose the opposite of that. After all, that is what freedom means in love knowing that free will is the prerequisite of any goodness or love allows freewill beings to choose contrary to itself in the hopes that one day humans will learn the potential they have by the spirit of God to live in the perfectly loving way they were designed for and purposed for from the beginning. For love, always hopes and never believes anyone is too far gone.
Hopefully, this qualifies as a response that may be some good food for thought for you. As it is, I am finishing this response here.
However, I do acknowledge that in multiple of your replies, you have raised questions on the validity of my view of the Scriptures and them pointing to God being love. I think that part of that comes from your assumption of my view of the Scriptures, and how I would read them as a Christian (that they are the word of god, inerrant, should be taken literally, etc…). However, at this point, I think it won’t surprise you that I don’t read them in that standard way that most western English speaking/reading Christians do. It is not lost on me that if I were to read them that way, that you would have many scriptures to levy against my view of God as love. I do believe, though, that my way of reading scripture is more accurate to the historical way of doing so and I will come back with another response to explain how that is possible in more detail in the near future.
Having said all this, I hope this response gives you some food for thought and until you respond, or until I come back and respond to your remarks concerning the scriptures themselves, I wish you love, hope, joy, and peace, as we ponder what we have already discussed up to this point.
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I also just realized I failed to address your second argument and the one actual scripture that you brought up. John 3:18. I can see how you would think that verse makes God’s love conditional but you know what that verse does not say? It does not say that God condemns those who do not believe. Perhaps this is a good time to point out that no where in scripture does it say God condemns any one (and if it did, I would readily agree with you that this would make God’s love conditional and therefore not really love at all).
Instead it says just that they are condemned already. Why and by who, this passage does not say. However, I think that we have other passages that do tell us who does. Of those other passages I think I think Romans 14:22-23.
My translation of those verses would be as follows-
22 The faith/commitment to faithful loyalty that you have, keep to yourself before God and don’t try to force it on others. When you have thought something through and approved something, and can therefore do it with a clear conscience, without condemning yourself, God’s blessing is on you as you do it. 23 But if someone doubts or is unsure in what they do, they are condemned even as they eat or do such a thing, because they do not do so in faithful loyalty to God. For, to us who have pledged faithful allegiance to God through Jesus our anointed King and Lord, whatever is not done in faithful loyalty to God is falling short of the purpose for which we have been created for.
You can see there that what condemns us is our very own conscience when we don’t do things in faith and loyalty to God/Love.
Think of it this way. We don’t wish to be in the presence of someone who we know loves us but we know we have acted unlovingly toward and harmed. Like a child who knows they violated a rule of a parent (even if they know that rule was put in place by the parents love for their own good). Their conscience has the potential to condemn them and keeps them from coming back into fellowship with the parent even if the parent will or (in God’s case already knows what they have done and) already has forgiven them.
So if one will not come back in faith to the God who in love created them and in love has forgiven them, then it is their very own conscience that condemns them.
For the record scripture is also aware that this is a problem and because of this makes it quite clear that this was one of the reasons for the atonement made ready on the cross.
In light of this there is a very important doctrine of atonement that must be fully rejected in light of this. The atonement doctrine I am rejecting fully is what is called the “satisfactory penal substitution”. This doctrine says that what Jesus did in dying on the cross was purchase our forgiveness from God the father. This essentially teaches us that Jesus (God the Son) saves us from God the father. Which of course is complete nonsense, incoherent (if forgiveness is purchased it can no longer be called forgiveness), and makes God the father completely unloving.
Instead scripture teaches the Christus victor of atonement that says Jesus in dying on the cross revealed God the fathers love in defeating our 4 fold enemies of sin, death, evil powers/ spiritual beings, and yes indeed even our very own conscience.
Now many who teach the Christus victor view of atonement focus on the first 3 of sin, death, and evil but forget the important aspect of our own conscience. Luckily the author of Hebrews does not forget and makes it his main focus of the atonement. Repeatedly throughout the letter of Hebrews the atonement is framed as what gives us a clean conscience before God and it’s perhaps, most clearly in Hebrews 9:14 which states, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
Now, hopefully this helps as a start as I have attempted to explain your 2 main points but of course I am sure there are quite possibly more or perhaps I have not been clear enough in my understanding of or explanation of one or even both your points. So please feel free to consider these 2 responses as starting point and I am more than willing to continue the discussion if you would like.
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