WHAT IF ‘GOD IS LOVE?’

For many months now (and off and on for decades) I have been holding this question: What IF ‘God is Love?’   My main focus has been on the faith traditions of ‘The People of the Book’ (Jews, Christians, and Muslims).  I have embraced Brother Wayne Teasdale’s concept of ‘The Interspiritual Quest’ [Gentle Reader: You might check out Brother Teasdale’s book ‘The Mystic Heart’]. 

Consider the following:

• All those who love you are beautiful; they overflow with your presence so that they can do nothing but good.  There is infinite space in your garden; all men, all women are welcome here; all they need do is enter. –The Odes and Psalms of Solomon

• God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. –1 John 4:16

• O Marvel! a garden amidst the flames. My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Ká ba, and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camel takes, that is my religion and faith. –Ibn ‘ Arabi, “O Marvel”

• I profess the religion of love, Love is my religion and my faith. My mother is love, My father is love, My prophet is love, My God is love. I am a child of love. I have come only to speak of love. –Rumi “I Profess the Religion of Love”

When I reflect upon and strive to learn more about each of the Abrahamic Faith Traditions (the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Traditions – ‘The People of the Book’) I keep returning to the major and common belief of each: God IS Love!  This is the unifying tap root that connects these three diverse Faith Traditions.  They are indeed siblings of Abraham and children of the One God. 

When rooted in love – and not in jealousy or envy or spite or self-righteousness – these three Faith Traditions welcome each other as equally valid means for developing a relationship with the God who is Love. 

I live in the United States and among other things the United States is ‘Land of the Consumer.’  Our primary Cultural Metaphor is the Banking Metaphor.  People are not fully human beings, people are assets, commodities and resources.  Consequently we become conditioned to embrace the ‘spiritual life’ as if it, too, were another commodity, asset and resource.  We are rooted in the measurable external rather than being rooted an inner, spiritual life that nurtured by love – love for each person. 

The God of Love continues to strive to teach us via centuries of wisdom teachings that ‘LOVE’ – active, engaged, compassionate and fearless love – is the way (the only way?) to save ourselves and others from the firestorms of hate that rage around us and in us. 

Our challenge is to seek together to identify those teachings and practices that unify us in Love rather than continue to emphasize those that divide us in jealousy and self-righteousness.  ‘Seek love and you will find love!’  I offer us a question to hold (I write it in the first person): Do I really believe that God IS the God of Love?  I leave us with God’s words:  ‘Love one another as I love you.’