THE COMMAND TO LOVE

 “Love makes the world go around” is the cliché.  Ironically, that is true! Love is a dynamic, not an emotion. The world does go around, and the love of God spins the world on its axis and around the axis of the Sun.

However, many do not associate that love with God, albeit God is love.

Few can define love. but they can sense it; they know it when it stops on them. The senses gather the subjective things from the world and objectify them.

Just like heat, few can define it, but even a baby learns what heat is by sensing it. Like heat is radiation in waves, when it stops at the flesh, it appears on the skin. It is metricized by the melanin in the flesh, or the redness caused by too high a temperature. Light is sensed as heat only at some wavelengths and coldness by less heat.

Christians make much ado about love. However, the word “love” is not even in the Bible! “Love” is the closest word in the English to describe the grace of God. Many people, pagans not accepted, often repeat the mantra, “I love you,” without understanding what love is all about.

For a moment, let’s disregard Mr. Webster. For me, love is feeling a closeness to someone or something. An object can be loved, or even an idea.

My family are the “objects” of my love. There is a bond between them and me. That “bond” is an entanglement of some sort. If you doubt that, remove your loved ones from your presence and a feeling of loneliness should ensue without regard to how distant.

If there is no love, even in proximity, there are no feelings, except maybe misery.

The Greek words for love and hate in the Bible are generally agape and miseo, from which the word, “misery” is derived. Misery is easily detected but love, not so easily.

Again, disregarding Mr. Webster, agape is the most prevalent “love” in the Bible. It is not physical at all but sensory.

God is the “Cloud” of the affection for the Christian, and for God, His creatures are the “objects” of His affection. There is a bond therein, and that bond is that He is our “Father,” and Christians are His “children,” usually specified as “sons.”

I mentioned to a fellow Christian that much is hidden in scripture due to language differences. These are perfect examples. Those who say “love,” so often have no idea what love is, and are hence unable to express it.

In the same manner, Christians are not biological “sons” of God. They are those who have been “engendered” by God above (John 3:7), which is written “born again.”

Christians are genetic sons of God. God is in their genomes; hence human beings, unlike the other animals, are entangled differently with God. The other species were not made in the Image of God, so they are not entangled in the same degree that humans are. We were selected; “elected” if you prefer, over the other animals, and mankind is the dominant, or elected, species. (That deals with the false doctrine of Calvinism about the “election” before the foundation of the world.)

Love is that residual entanglement when regardless of time and distance, some people sense God. Sensing God defines the Christian, but He must be sensed in a positive way.

Safety and danger are generally easily sensed. Demons even sense God and believe in Him (Jas 2:9); they fear God. Fear is their evidence of a real God. However, devils do not love God.

I submit that most Christians fear God and are miserable about Him even existing because the Will of God runs counter to their own personal wills. Hence, existences are in a battle of the wills. Each person defends their own domain when they feel threatened. Many see God as merely an existential threat to their well-being, thus, they have little, if any, goodwill toward God.

I am getting there: Love is “in accord” with God and others without regard to their traits (Acts 2:1). We are even to love (agapao) our enemies (Mat 5:24).  We are to love them much. How so? Not by physically entangling with them erotically but wanting them to never perish (John 3:16).

The love of God is much love — agapao — in the sense that He sacrificed, not His biological “son” but Himself — His own Genome in the person of Jesus.

Jesus was more than a “son” in an English sense, but inwardly, Jesus was the very Image of God. In other words, God sacrificed His own vessel, or “cup,” because of agapao.

The love of God is active. “He sacrificed.” He gave of Himself.

However, God loves at a distance as well. He can also love from a different age. He is always Present NOW! That He is the “alpha and omega” indicates that from beginning to the ending, He is always with us.

That omnipresence is quantum-likeness to a tee. God, in the beginning, was revealed by His Dynamics; Himself creating things. When He came near and stopped (“rested”), God was unseen but there, and only detected by the “sound” of His Thoughts.

Then, after much chaos, God appeared again. This time, God became Objective and He was named a very dynamic Name — “Ya(hweh) Saves.” To this day, Jesus is known by the salvation that comes only from Him. Albeit He is gone from here, His Goodness can be sensed.

Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever” (John 14:16).

God is with us in Spirit — “pneuma.” That dynamic wave, or wind, is our comfort. Rest assured, that God remains with us in Spirit. Jesus demonstrated the evidence of the Spirit; I am not referring to speaking in strange languages, but the “language” of God — agape.

Jesus lost virtue when He loved. He could sense it leaving Himself when those who trusted Him were healed. Indeed, healing is the ultimate dynamic of comforting.

Jesus had goodwill for those whom He healed. He desired that they would never perish. He felt an attachment to them as if them and Him were one. He was empathetic to them because he had the same flesh and spirit that they had.

God had entangled all human beings with Himself and each other in Christ before the foundation of the world. All He needed to do was to give them Virtue from Himself to restore their goodwill.

Indeed, when they were healed, those He healed had goodwill for Jesus and followed Him. He asked that they sin no more because they were no longer “fathered” by the Wicked One, the “Devil,” having been re-engendered from “God With Us” (Emanuel). God is indeed with us from afar in both time and distance as if He is right here! He is indeed a “Quantum-Like God”!

Emanuel is that entanglement; even far away, God is close to us, and time is no barrier. His love for everyone is a classic case of the “uncertainty principle” that demonstrates that His goodwill is for sure and real.

When you say, “I love you,” do you understand that whoever it is, you are entangled with that person, idea, object, or spirit? Christians indeed are “kindred spirits” because some of God is in all of them. Likewise, those still entangled with the Devil, he is still their genetic “father” — the archetype.

Sure, Christians get emotional about God because they empathize with Him. It should have been us who died on the cross, but Jesus was the scapegoat for us; He bore our sins because He empathized and knew full well that we had not the fortitude to do so ourselves.

Empathy is the practice of love — doing to others those things we would like done to ourselves (Luke 6:31). Empathy is performing much love — agapao.

In practice, too many Christians are miseo. They desire that you think like them, act like them, and be replicas of themselves; not images of God but their image. They are uncomfortable because you do not fit their mold.

Christians often look miserable because they are! They “shoot” scripture like fiery darts, trying to penetrate your thick skulls; much like demons who find it easy to penetrate thin skulls.

Christ loved us all so much, even His enemies, that He died so that we need not. He did not argue with the accusers about the dastardly deed of taking lives but excused them for their ignorance (Luke 23:34). That was “grace” which was His way of expressing love.

Many Christians are enemies of each other. They have formed “mobs” each after the other, like intercity gangs; “Listen buddy, it is my way or you’re done!” That is how those not in Christ see Christians! They see argumentative Christians, failing to express the goodwill that they claim, and want no part in a mean-spirited “Christ.” They fail to understand that is the Devil’s way of getting to God — through his lesser images… easy pickin’s.

Christianity will be destroyed from within as is the M.O. of most conspirators. The Devil gets to Christ through those who say they love you and Jesus. All the while Christians of different viewpoints treat each other as enemies. They not only fail to love their enemies but target other Christians as well. “You must be me!” is their rebel cry!

What you believe about marginal doctrines is insignificant in the eternal scheme of things.

Did the repentant thief argue with anyone, especially Jesus, about doctrinal matters? Nada! He only looked at Jesus, saw that, that man was God in the flesh, and trusted Him to save him.

That very day the repentant thief was in Paradise with Jesus. They were closely coupled in another realm where Satan did not exist. When was that thief saved? When He was with the Holy Ghost of Jesus in another realm. So long as he was nailed to the cross, Satan could have got into him, like he did Judas.

So, you disagree with the time of salvation? Big deal. You will know it when you get there because you shall be in the place of salvation.

It is a noble idea that you feel safe, and indeed, you may be close to Jesus and even totally entangled with Him, but until you are with Him in Paradise, you are a target for the fiery darts of the Wicked One.

Love, therefore, is having no animosity toward others, but Christians are often more against other Christians than their enemies.

Now let’s examine a case where love works dynamically:

Herod and Pilate became entangled.

“When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, because he had heard many things of Him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him” (Luke 23:8).

What might the miracle be? Perhaps Jesus would escape death, overcome His captors, or even be raised from the dead. Herod Antipas trusted Jesus to do some thing remarkable. He somehow sensed the peculiarity of Jesus. Perhaps the nobleman (John 4) was the one who persuaded Antipas that Jesus was special.

“The same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves” (Luke 23:12). Why would that be? The claim was that Jesus was the “king of the Jews,” to which it is written, “Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, ‘I find no fault in this man’” (Luke 23:4).

Two enemies became friends, not because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the saying goes, but because the friend of my friend is my friend.

Pilate and Herod were entangled together because they looked at Jesus as trustworthy. They, among the many, were the few that were entangled that day. They loved Jesus, not emotionally, but because that was the right thing to do. Their attitudes had changed about Jesus. Call that what you like, but it is a case of loving the enemy, and the common denominator was knowing that Jesus is God!

Therefore loving (agapao) is the transference of virtue. It is the dynamics (dynamis) of thinking good thoughts, that when stopped, appear as good actions.

Miseo, “hatred,” is opposite; it is the stress caused by differences.

What if Pilate and Herod had continued their hatred of each other? Jesus put a bond between them; the release of His Virtue affected them and their attitudes (thoughts) about the identity of Jesus changed.

Therefore “love” is a dynamic of the mind. It is having good thoughts about another person or God, even knowing the truth about them and continuing to have goodwill toward them!

A quantum command follows:

 

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us… (1 John 4:7-9)

 

Dogmatic church doctrines or theological ideas are the most cunning way of dispensing hatred. Most people hate others because they think differently. The truth should free Christians from that, but it lingers because that is the residual nature of the Beast within us humans; that “Old Man” — the dominant “archetype” residual in us all.

Because Jesus knows who we really are, He has grace. He knows that long ago our identities were secured in our human genome when the original sin got into us.

We each still have the killer instinct within, like the lions, and the process of love is lessening the instinct to diminish others to exalt ourselves in the manner of Cain with Abel.

Christians fail to love one another so often. That is our weakness that must be overcome. Love is meekness, putting God, others, and ourselves in right perspective.

We are as terrible as the enemy! Even Christians go for the kill merely because others think differently.

What is it to me if you differ with my ideas? It is none of my business, nor am I concerned, so long as you see Jesus as God. Your knit-picking doctrine, and mine, is the cunning way that Satan gets into the minds of Christians.

The repentant thief, Dismus, did not worry about anything after understanding that the man Jesus was God even before He revealed that. It was not the when, but the dynamic of salvation that comforted him. That day was less important than salvation itself, and many are more worried about the time of salvation than salvation itself!

That difference, over the years has divided Christianity to the extent that there seems to be little love, even for each other, among Christians.

John wrote, “Let us love one another: for love is of God.” Love is a Dynamic of God — a Quantum Thing that spreads and stops at each individual just like the tree example of Jim Al-Khalali. God spreads His love like a cloud of light that goes direct to each tree as if each tree is the only tree.

Do you not see that the Garden of Trees was God’s Way of talking about quantum things? Can you not see the “Light” was the distribution of His love (His goodwill; Gen 1:29) to the so-called “trees” that represents the souls of humans?

John added to that; “and every one that loves is born of God.” Not that anyone is biologically born of God, but “born” in the sense that those who love are engendered by God with a very different, but good, genetics.

Then came the most quantum-like idea, “God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us.”

That “Cloud” by day and “Fire” by night?” They were love from God; His way of distributing love ala the uncertainty principle, but certain that everyone got his share; that all the “trees” of the Garden would be loved without distinction, and that He would share it to even the ugly trees.

What would they need to do, symbolizing men as trees? Nothing! God would do it all just as He did with the other larger objects of the creation.

picture credit; "Love as a Wave," Pinterest