What is Love?

A first attempt at fighting my way out of this paper bag

Again, I'm writing this to think, not to declare. I find myself living, at this late stage of life, in a scary new world and I'm struggling to make sense of it. My concepts of love are wildly delusional. I find I've lived with false definitions of all the foundational values of life, and I'm trying to get my feet back onto something solid. I can only do that by talking these things through with my oldest friend, the pen.

Love, to me, has always been magical, essentially Divine, literally superhuman. The love I believed in hoped all things, bore all things, believed all things, endured all things. Humans don't do that. They just don't. Mere fallen mortals give up hope, drop burdens, lose faith, and quit. I loved and I quit. I can list horrible memories of times I gave up on people, and am humiliated to report I'm glad I gave up. Giving up loving people made my life better in every case.

I've played hide and seek with that cognitive dissonance for decades, waiting for heaven to clear up my confusions. I've promised to love in god-like ways but failed to love even in human-like ways more times than I can count ... more times than I can let myself remember. I've known over and over again what love was required to do and I've failed to do it. My decisions have been sin to me, even as they calmed and centered my life. I've confessed and repented and fallen into the same pit again. Like the bathed sow, I've irresistibly returned to my mire.

Decades of repentance and praying for sanctification find me unchanged. I've fixed nothing. At a core, measurable level, repentances have given me no new ability to rise above my humanity. That thing in me making me fail is still in me. I'm the same weak child I was the first time I failed to obey love.

The Bible set a standard for me, but Christianity did not empower me to reach that standard. The gracious Holy Spirit and the promised sanctification delivered nothing. They satisfy billions of people daily, and I don't need to mess with their joy, but I sit weeping today. Either I failed Christianity or Christianity failed me, and the data lead me to suspect the latter. I'm forced to re-examine the whole idea of love.

I start by downgrading Paul's grandiose theology and most of John's poetry to life-size. Their definitions of love are built upon their falsely inflated portrayal of Jesus' sinlessness and sacrifice. Their stories of Jesus are bigger than Jesus' actual life, and I cannot abide the bigger than life any more. Life is not bigger than life.

Next, I have to downgrade God's love to mere divine-size. This is daunting. It's one thing to say Paul's and John's writings were amazing without being inspired, and to let some of the air out of them. It's another to say the God Ezra and Jesus created is a poetic inflation of the true God, because I have less evidence of what God is than they did. On the other hand, I do have two thousand years of history they lacked, and my own 60 years in the flow of evolution to draw upon.

Two millennia of history have moved the needle a great deal on our understandings of religion. Every religion makes the unprovability of God a core virtue. They all agree God blesses the righteous, but only in unmeasurable ways. Christianity believes its adherents are uniquely blessed and persecuted, both enabled and hindered at every turn. We believe God and the Devil are hard at work in a million ways, and none can be detected. Every religion stakes its certainty of being loved by God on the dizzying declaration they lack all visible proof there's an omnipotent God who loves them. Two millennia have taught us to accept no religion can validate itself.

Christianity stands with one toe outside that flow, in that they point to the valid historicity of creation ex nihilo, the exodus from Egypt, the resurrection of Jesus, and the inerrancy of the Bible. Christianity claims to be historically verifiable, if not presently verifiable.

These events are loudly proclaimed, but their loudness seems to be the only point in their favor. Every physically measurable discovery points unerringly toward a 4 billion years-old planet, a Hyksos myth spun into a founding narrative, a discarded body imagined as ascended, and a truly wise holy book with normal, human levels of error. I proclaimed every one of those foundations of Fundamentalism for 50 years, and I honor the people who defend them today, but Christianity fails all evidence tests. Again, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then, but Christianity's claim to historicity crumbles at every poke.

The Bible claims belief should spring from measurable evidence, evidence only the fool tries to deny. The Bible makes every belief of the patriarchs evidence of God. Every blessing of the good and every curse on the evil is evidence of God. God is in all places visible, and only the willingly blind don't see him. Jesus, himself, asserts as much.

Two millennia of science make that assertion awkward. Science shows every blessing to be sourced from causes preceding it and every curse from similar cause. Earthquakes in Oklahoma are due to geology (or fracking), not God's judgement. Bumper crops in Iowa are due to farm management techniques, not God's blessing. Some say God blessed farmers with those management techniques, but that argument falls flat when measured, too. We learned to measure, and God stubbornly refuses to tip the scales in any way at all.

God's love also cannot be disproven, but who cares? Who would want to disprove a thing that makes no difference? I cannot disprove the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, but why bother when I know I will never spend any of its gold? I'll happily let the believers in God and pots of gold believe, but I have to try to live in reality. God's love for people either does not exist or it is carefully, meticulously curated so as to have the same impact as if it did not exist.

God does not love people -- not in any measurable, detectable way.

I know that's tedious, and I'm sorry. I need to do that to clear the table so I can begin to build what I may believe now about God's love.

I believe a Naturalist God exists. I believe God interacts with me as a part of their creation. I believe God loves this ecosystem and me as a part of it. Ezra and Jesus were beautifully sensitive to encounters they had with that God, in the privacy of their innermost beings, and left for us their best portraits of that God. They tell us their understandings of that God's love for us, and Jesus saw God's love more deeply and accurately than Ezra. I do believe in the wisdom of Christianity's holy book.

Paul went beyond Ezra, but he fell short of the God that Jesus described. Paul held on to Ezra and actually created a new flavor of Judaism. Jesus steered a new path, and Paul could not quite follow him, try though he might. John is less clear. In fact, John says so much so generally that almost anyone can make almost anything of everything he said. John shot-gunned out a pattern of thoughts, some going beyond Jesus, some hitting Jesus' mark, and some falling further short than Paul's.

In defining love, I'm going to go to the gospels. I'm going to take them as a starting place, and then I'm going to do what I can to fortify them with everything the world has learned about evolution and romance. I start with one foundational assertion:

God loves perfectly.

God loves perfectly -- and God did not die for anyone. God did not take a back seat, put anyone's needs first, surrender their will or preference to anyone. God did not turn to the left or the right from their own desires.

The temperature of the world just dropped about 15 degrees, right?

God loves perfectly, and God has no need to be in anyone's presence. God is not seeking to make sinners holy, so they can be in their presence. God is working to make their ecosystem as amazing as possible, as fruitful as possible. God wants to see the beautiful flowers, the sweet strawberries, and the towering pines. God wants to see people flowering and bearing fruit and has no use for the ones who bear only thorns, but not because God needs to be loved.

God loves perfectly, and every dram of God's love is conditional. God sends the life-giving rain to the just and the unjust, but two chapters later Jesus says he will tell the unjust to depart because he never knew them. Jesus says in John "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him" and "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father".

The point of those jarring declarations is to soften my ears a bit, to break up the soil of my heart to hear something counter-intuitive. God loves all creation, to include the unjust, but God's love does not match the Christian ad copy. I ordered and ruined my life in accord with the idea God loved me romantically and unconditionally. God does not. God's love is conditional, and God never self-destructed for love of any single sheep of their pasture, no matter what Paul said.

God loves perfectly, and perfect looks different than I was told.

The flip side of this equation is that God never enslaved us. Paul says we are now slaves to God and also says we are no longer slaves but are now free. I gather serving God must be complex, but Christianity went nuts after the Bible was written about how we were truly slaves of God. Christianity was wrong. God has not enslaved anyone. The Bible metaphorically asserts we are enslaved to sin, but no matter what anyone, anywhere says, including the Bible, God does not employ us as servants, slaves, nor as hands and feet. We live and move as our own agents within God's economy, and God loves us as part of that economy. God does not use us as cogs in any master plan to create a perfect heaven and earth.

God loves perfectly.

God is not longing for us romantically. If God wanted a mate for themselves or for their offspring, God would reproduce kind after God's kind. The plan presented by Ezekiel and Paul of marrying God to a chosen remnant of humanity is unimaginable, but being unimaginable is not a proof. I once wholly believed God was going to infuse the chosen remnant with the divine breath so we together would be a helpmeet suitable to God's Son. I once imagined it, but all the legs underpinning that stool have crumbled. God is not going to take us home like Rebekkah or Rachel from the well. God sees us for what we are and loves us as the tiny piece of their immense universe that we are.

God loves me with the same love they have toward a dandelion, a clownfish, or a squirrel. I can feel God's love, as long as I do so accurately. I can expect God's support, as long as I expect the support God will actually give. I believe God grants tiny insights to whales and to me, showing us the world as God themselves see it. God gives us a chance to choose life and kindness, pulls back the curtain enough that we can love the things God loves. God gives us a chance to be a self-aware part of God's gift to themselves, and that's enough. God attends to the moments a sparrow falls and to the moment I’ll die, but God will not miraculously save either of us. God loves their ecosystem, loves me for the part I play within it, and allows me to share in that love.

God loves perfectly.

I can live with that God, and I can live with that love. I could wish for a more sparkly love from God, a love with glass slippers and midnight waltzes, but this is the love that is. God so loves the world. I'm okay with that.

God loves their enemies by being faithful and just toward them and giving them their fair day in the sun to do their part in evolving the creation into whatever it can become. God loves their friends by giving them their fair day in the sun to do their part in evolving the creation into whatever it can become. God loves their own creation by granting micro-insights to any being open to seeing the world from God's point of view.

This guts the ideal I was given, the roadmap to being a loving child, friend, coworker, spouse, neighbor, parent, and leader. I'm okay with that. It's going to be a shift, but I can begin to model my love differently as I grow into this new understanding, this embrace of reality.

If I would love as a perfect parent, I should give my children their fair day in the sun to do their part in evolving the creation into whatever it can become. The same applies to my friends, my coworkers, and my neighbors, even the bad ones. If I would love as I have been loved, then I need to make sure everyone has their fair day in the sun.

I love my spouse by giving them their day in the sun. God-like love is standing with them and supporting them in every appropriate way while holding my own needs in equal standing. I'm not supposed to try to recreate the pattern of Jesus' perfect life and death for my wife, but to be honest and fair with this one to whom I've committed my life. This is a strange thing to me and does not ring quite right. In fact, it raises a quiver-full of questions from my inner culture-lawyer. Let me try asking them of myself in a Q&A format.

* What about, "I, ___, take thee, ___, to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part"?

I don't see any needed change here, except in understanding. Wedding vows are a contract between two people, and it's wholly appropriate to make that contract and to honor it. That said, fewer than half of couples are able to honor those vows. Divorce is a reality. In divorce, it's still possible to give the departing spouse their day in the sun, to support them in every way possible as they depart. Marriage is a promise to a spouse, not to God, and divorce is no offense before God. We need to embrace the reality of humans. Humans cannot predict the future and well-intentioned humans can vow falsely. God does not grant miracles to dying marriages. Random tragedies happen. We need to quit living in the delusion stronger vows can control the future.

* What about soaring romance and flaming passion?

I don't see any needed change here, except in understanding. Across 200,000 years of genetic and cultural evolution people have become different from each other in some ways and not at all different in other ways. Some people live and love with swells of emotion and others with steady loyalty. We need to release the sparkly lie that all people begin a romance in flaming passion and all people cool down to steady loyalty. People are different and they love differently. We need to quit living in the delusion people all marry for the same reasons and love in the same patterns.

* What's to keep men and women from just abandoning their spouses whenever they feel the urge?

This has been the way of humanity through countless generations, and it's actually been quite successful. Christianity has presented a different plan for marriage, and it has its strong points. The idea of a life-long vow has real merit, but the idea of making that plan of marriage the total picture has failed. The divorce rate of Christianity is high and the misery rate in Christian marriage is dicey, too. Judaism did not practice life-long marriage, not in the generations before Jesus and not in Jesus' generation. This is a Christian thing, and we need to remove Christianity's false claims of God's special mercies from the discussion. Society has profited by the invention of Christian marriage, but it's time to step back and tune it again. Christian marriage added the parting at death thing, but it did not invent the idea of loyalty. In all nature, males tend to favor their own offspring. There's more than one way to do this.

* What happens when two people who disagree about how romance works fall in love?

In Christianity, both people conform to an objective standard neither controls. This has the sound of fairness about it, but in reality the person who naturally hews most closely to the Christian standard is able to use that standard as a cudgel to have their way. In the Naturalist religion I'm talking about, the two people will need to talk before, during, and if necessary after the relationship to forge the unique pattern that works for them. Negotiation requires more time and discussion than theological proclamation, more maintenance, more compromise on both sides. The final product is more realistic, more comfortable, more sustainable.

* What about Cinderella-like thrilling romance? Or joylessly spiritual marriage for reproduction? Or love at first sight? Or Jesus's and Paul's calls for celibacy?

Cinderella and Paul and the Pope were all living their best lives. More power to them. So were the Wesleys with all their kids and abuse or the Darwins with all their kids and joy. These different degrees of romance and productivity and solitude and bonding are part of the human range of comfort. One person may need a glass slipper to fit while another needs a bracing difference of opinions to feel loved. And these two people may find each other attractive. This is humanity at its human-est. Love is about giving each other their day in the sun to do their part in evolving the creation into whatever they can make it. Differences can be hard, and they can be fun.

* What about being willing to die for each other?

That is Christian nonsense. It's never deployed in good faith, and it cannot yield good fruit. If a person is ever moved to sacrifice their life for another's, all the world can honor and respect that action. If a person is ever moved to talk about sacrificing their life for another's, all the world can write that person off as crassly manipulative and utterly ignorant of love. We need to culturally wash our minds out with soap and forget anyone ever said those words.

The conclusion of this round of thinking is that I need to untether myself from Christianity's proclamations of what love is. The feelings it promised me have no foundation. I must come to understand my love is going to *feel* a lot like me. I'm going to have to love as the human I am, not as the human Christianity says Jesus modeled for me. Love *is* giving another person their day in the sun to do their thing. Romantic love is going with them on their path. Being loved back romantically is them going with me on mine. Relationship is the negotiation between the paths and the people on them.

I cannot tell you how different this all feels to me, and a little dizzying, but I think it's more accurate than what I had a week ago. Time will tell.