What is God’s action?

As I continue considering the vast implications of agape as God’s only action, I find myself wondering: how do people personally experience the power of Creation? For my own spiritual awareness, the power of Creation manifests to me as agape. That’s how I see agape personalizing divine Presence. Of course, the power of agape is very subtle; and yet -- is that not how we ‘sense’ divine Presence? Even though I've read about the 'crashing, overwhelming, flash' type of spiritual encounter (for example, Paul on the road to Damascus), I've never met anyone who it happen to them.

I mentioned in my previous posting that I’ve come back several times to that section of the New Testament that we call 1 John. When I started re-reading it by leaving ‘agape’ in its original form (as we were meant to read it), I began to see much deeper meaning opening up to me. Slowly, over the last couple of years, my perspective was transformed as I realized that 1 John used ‘agape’ in a way to convey God's action as it is manifested to people.

So what follows is my reading of the most compelling verses:

 “Agape is from God, and everyone who shares agape is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t share agape does not know God, because God is agape. … We have known and have believed the agape that God has for us. God is agape, and those who remain in agape remain in God and God remains in them. … There is no fear in agape, but perfect agape drives out fear.” (1 Jn 4: 7-8; 16-18a)

When I read those verses that way (with 'agape' inserted in its spiritual power meaning), I'm able to see a whole new realm of meaning.

As I showed in last April 18’s posting, the very identity of the followers of Jesus is defined by living by the power of spiritual agape, and then sharing agape with each other and also allowing the Holy Spirit to extend agape through our actions out to others. (John 13:34-35) Jesus was demonstrating to his closest followers what that spiritual power could do in human life and in relationships. Also in that Last Supper section of John, Jesus promised, “If you share my agape, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, and he will send spiritual power, to be with you forever.” (14:15-17) So for the Gospel of John, Christian = agape.

I see Paul confirming that with Romans 5:5 -- “The agape of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Paul seemed to be saying that the spiritual power sent by Jesus continued to pour God's agape into the hearts of his followers and into the heart of the community of followers.

The sad realization, about the increasingly violent world, is that not enough of those claiming to be Christians actually do learn to live by agape. When Christians don’t put agape into action, then the potential divine influence (spread through Christian compassion and kindness) doesn’t get realized strongly enough to produce the desperately needed reduction in violence. And yet... God has specifically called us to that work of reducing violence.

I’ve always thought of those verses in 1 Jn. as starting a major new perspective on theology. So now, after 2,000 years, we can begin to see those verses showing that agape is the main action of God.
To me that leaves people throughout the world with the immediate work to come to terms with what that means for the survival of the human race. So it is through agape transforming human living, that we can see there is still a glimmer of hope for our very survival. Such transformation has vast implications for relations between individuals, within groups, between groups, in communities, and even between nations. Otherwise the fearfulness and destructive tendencies of humans will lead us to ruin our communities and our environment, thus jeopardizing the quality of living on the surface of this planet.

Two years blogging about agape

Two years ago I started this blog about agape. I started by struggling with what St. Paul was working so hard to explain about 'agape.' I wondered why everyone seemed to think Paul would need to work that hard to explain love, and yet he never used any of the commonly used Greek words for 'love.' Obviously something was wrong with the usual interpretation.

When Paul found himself being asked by non-Jewish Greeks to explain the teachings of Jesus Christ, he seemed to have realized that some of the words used by Greek-speaking Jews were not familiar to the average Greek. The main one of these words was ‘agape.’ So he spent a lot of time explaining what ‘agape’ meant. 

When we read those passages from his letters, it helps our understanding if we start with the basic assumption that he was talking about a spiritual power (and definitely he was not talking about what the average Greek thought of as love).

I came to that conclusion many years ago, when I first started finding out that English translations of the Bible did not bring out the full meaning of the original text. Eventually I found out that the English word ‘love’ did not capture the spiritual meaning that Paul was expressing with the word ‘agape.’ Of course, everything that the average American means by our word ‘love’ was expressed by the words that the average Greek used (such as, 'eros,' 'philia,' and 'storge'). And none of those Greek words for love were what Paul was trying to convey with the word ‘agape.’ That's why he didn't use those words. So I concluded that the reason Paul did not use any of the usual Greek words for love was because he was not talking about love.

During these 2 years of writing, I’ve come back several times to that section of the New Testament that we call 1 John. The more I continue studying those parts of 1 John that deal with agape, the more I see why we lose most of the meaning when we translate ‘agape’ with our common English word ‘love.’ 1 John used ‘agape’ in a way to convey God's action as it is manifested to people. I finally realize that the author's deep awareness of God's action through agape is what led to the great acclamation: “God is agape.”

It is through that understanding that these 2 years of writing culminated on Dec. 19 with the thought coming to me: Agape is God’s ONLY action. During the weeks since then, I’ve been struggling to understand what such a conclusion of spiritual awareness could mean. What would the implications then be for all those other thousands of years of theories about God’s action?

I think such a thought conveys the full meaning that God’s supreme act to any human being comes through not only agape opening a person to divine Presence, but also agape motivating and empowering humans to actions of respect and caring with those around us. That’s how human sensibility becomes aware of agape’s double power!

And so I concluded that by the time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans, he could express this profound insight: through giving agape to humans, God makes it possible for us to be able to find the spiritual reality of intimate, intense affection such that we can give full acceptance and mutual respect to everyone around us. And Paul also explained that it is the power of God’s Presence that can transform a human life to perform such profound actions.

And so I was finally able to say on Dec. 27: the very survival of the human race depends on coming to terms with agape as God’s only action.