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| Photo by Leighann Renee on Unsplash |
At its heart, the Bible is a love story. It's the story of God's True Love for people, people's rejection of that love, and God's attempts to win them back. It's the story of people's broken attempts to replace True Love with other things, and God's attempts to restore their brokenness.
At its most beautiful, the Bible tells the story of people allowing God's love to transform their lives in amazing ways. At its most tragic, the Bible tells the story of people rejecting and rejecting and rejecting God's love until he can't reach them any more to save them from themselves.
The Bible shows us that God's love is warm, fuzzy, unconditional, unabashed, crazy-about-you love.
But not only that.
It shows that God's love is also wise love, the kind that doesn't let you have candy when you should be eating broccoli.
It's patient love, the kind that keeps on loving you when you curse in its face and spit on it.
It's tough love, the kind that sees your potential when you can't, pushes you beyond what you thought you could do, and helps you grow into the world-class athlete you only half-believed you could be.
Because "love" that lets you eat candy for three meals a day, seven days a week isn't True Love; it's neglect.
"Love" that gives up when you reject it isn't True Love; it's self-interest.
"Love" that sees what you could be but never tells you isn't True Love; it's selling you short.
God's love is True Love, and the Adventist faith is the faith I have found that best reflects that love.
I don't mean that all Adventists or the church structure or administration reflect God's love perfectly (though I sincerely hope they're trying). What I do mean is that, at their core, Adventist beliefs and their relationship to the Bible best embody God's love and the ways he wants to make it visible in our world today.
Adventism teaches that, because he is love, God created us to be in relationship with him and with each other, setting aside the Sabbath each week to celebrate that relationship. It teaches that, when we rejected his love and destroyed that relationship, he allowed us to exercise free will and gave us an opportunity to see what would happen. Sin and pain and sorrow and the whole Great Controversy are the result of God's creation trying to see what happens when we separate from him and do things our way instead of his.
Because God is love, he had a plan for salvation to restore the perfect relationship he wanted. He doesn't blast us when we screw up (as we ALL do, ALL the time), but blasted himself instead so he could give us all the second chances we want and need.
Because God is love, he won't force anyone who doesn't like him to hang out with him forever. He also won't allow us to go on destroying ourselves by living contrary to love forever. Instead, he asks us to choose: True Love or our own way. Based on our choice, he will, fairly, after proper investigation, execute judgment. Because God is love, he won't torture people throughout eternity if they choose their way instead of his.
Because God is love, he doesn't leave us alone in our choice. Through the incarnation, he shows us how True Love looks and acts and feels when it walks around on earth. Through Scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy, he gives us the information we need now to know what True Love is and how it works, how to have healthy minds, bodies, and relationships that work the way he designed them. As long as we let him, he gets down in the trenches with us through the Holy Spirit, helps us out in any way he can.
Finally, because God is love, he asks the church, people who love him, to help make his love visible on earth so everyone can make an informed choice: their way, or his Way.
I want to be one of those people. I want to be part of a movement of people whose highest goal is to renew True Love in the brokenness and separation of our world. I want to help restore people's relationships to God, to each other, and to the world around us. This is the church I believe in; this is the church I belong to.
It's time to refocus our eyes on this, the true heart of Adventism. For (to paraphrase Paul), if we can apply the best hermeneutic to our Bible reading, or argue down the opposing side with the best logic, or even smile brightly at everyone we meet, but have not Love, we are nothing.
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