2.2 Thou shalt...or else
In Matthew 22, Christ says…
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
This is holy scripture. “Thou shalt” puts you under a sacred obligation.
So imagine you’re a Sunday school teacher. You call together the children for the morning’s lesson. Once they’ve hushed, these little ones with puppy hearts, so eager to love everyone in their lives, so happy to offer their love freely as a gift, you tell them in your official church voice…
You have to love God—because he says so.
But this is a problem. Obedience can be commanded and pretense can be commanded, but…
Love cannot be commanded.
When God tries to force it, isn’t he showing us that he does not believe we would ever love him out of our own spontaneous affection? It makes me think maybe someone taught him that he was unlovable. I don’t know who that would be but that’s what I wonder.
And isn’t God, in the act of commanding love…
Killing the very thing he’s hoping for?
Because forced love is not love.
And if you believe the best you can do is to pretend that people love you…
What could be a more bitter experience of despair?
And it’s such a trap. Because God is supposed to be the paragon of love, the exemplar, the model for the rest of us. After all, we’re told that he’s the Creator. Which would mean that he’s the one who created love in the first place. And here he is, robed in his cosmic authority, telling us the kind of love he puts first is commanded love.
But God doesn’t stop with “thou shalt.” He backs up his command with a threat.
Imagine again that you’re the Sunday school teacher, and you tell the children…
You have to love God…or else he will send you to hell to burn forever.
And you say this because it’s your job to say it, but what do you really feel when you deliver this threat to little children?
I remember hearing this message when I was a kid. I couldn’t quite grasp what this hell thing was, but I could imagine burning. I could imagine being a candle that burned and hurt itself as it burned and it was a forever candle so it never burned itself out and so the hurting never stopped.
What we’re talking about here is torture. God is saying, “Love me or I will torture you, world without end.”
If you waterboard an enemy prisoner, at some point there will be an end to his suffering. Either you get the information you’re after, or you decide he doesn’t know anything and quit, or you ramp up the torture to get him to talk and kill him by accident.
Hell doesn’t work like this because…
God doesn’t let you die.
He keeps you alive, whatever there is of you, maybe your body transported to hell, maybe only your soul, so he can torture you through all eternity. Which means…
There will never be an end to your suffering.
Never.
Which makes me think about when I have a sinus infection. It makes the day very long and I want it to be over. And if the infection lasts three days, I get exhausted with it. And this is so very mild compared to burning. And imagine burning for a day, then a week, then a billion years, then endless billions.
Little children can become habituated to God’s lie about love, because it’s a gospel that’s preached early and often. And they’re so utterly dependent on their parents that they’ll usually submit to whatever the family beliefs are.
But what I struggle to understand is why grown–ups, who are now parents themselves, don’t protect their children. Why wouldn’t they fight for their kids? Why would they allow anyone to tell their children…
You have to love a torturer.
Now that I’m an old man, as I move into my final years, I find that childhood, instead of fading away, becomes a more vivid memory. And I imagine myself stepping back inside that little boy I once was, but with what I know now. And that little boy is dumbfounded.
Why would these adults believe such a terrible thing about love?
Why don’t they just simply love each other?
And love me.
And now I hear that little boy saying…
“I get it. God doesn’t know the first thing about love.
“And my parents are following him blindly, so that means they don’t understand love either, not really, not in the way I wish they did.
“And if their ideas about love are wrong. then maybe they’re wrong about me.
“And maybe they’re wrong when they make me believe I’m unlovable.
“Certainly they’re wrong. Because every little kid is lovable, unless someone wrecks him.”
