Doug Van Pelt

Soul Cravings.10

What Must I Do to Be Loved?
This was a cool chapter. It talked at length about conditional love and how we seem to project that kind of love on God. Many religions, it seems, work this way: you earn God's love. McManus took this thought to its logical conclusion: that God is an egomaniac that loves feeling self-important, so he makes himself all the more elusive to us so that we will continue to pursue him.

"It's like being in love with a person who has no interest in you. He loves your advances only because they make him feel self-important, but really he has no motivation to pursue you. It's all one-sided. He loves being pursued, and so your desire only inspires him to be more elusive."

"...He's just some really good-looking, smug, and arrogant Divine Being who loves being the object of all our affection."

Wow. Like McManus goes on to say, that is the kind of relationship that any good friend would try to talk us out of. "You're wasting your time!" we'd say.

Religion does kind of imply that, "If we want to get close to God, then follow these rules." That ain't right.

"Whatever kind of love you can purchase, it isn't the love your soul longs for. If you have to buy love, its' not even worth the price. I know that many of us look to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for our spiritual wisdom, but in this case John, Paul, George, and Ringo got it right -- can't buy me love."

That's a great quote!

What's really cool is that we are the objects of God's love. I think of all the romanctic movies out there -- whether it's a romantic comedy or a drama. They all follow a similar formula: love is discovered; love is somehow lost; one realizes that love is lost and must be pursued... Then there is the pursuit scene. Most of the time it's edited together with a music background, showing a collage of a person in pursuit of another. Long drives in the country, across bridges and such are common. So are actual running through the hallway, down the sidewalk kind of sequences.

God is the author of love and it seems He pursues us with this kind of relentless and reckless abandon.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at August 16, 2007 08:48 AM