December's Ask Theophilus featured a letter that began, "Can I offer you a moment's honesty? I really don't want the God of revelation to exist, a realization I came to when I still believed that He did." According to the letter's author, the God of the Bible just doesn't measure up to the standard of ideal love.

Last month I responded to the author's first two objections; this time I respond to his third. I then turn to what he calls his "greatest question" — a question to which he says no Christian can possibly reply.

READ PART 1

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Your final objection to the God of the Bible seems to be simply that He is God — or perhaps that, as God, He is Father. I'm reading between the lines, but I don't think I'm imagining what I find there.

In the first place, I'm struck that you never quite say that the biblical God isn't real; what you say is that you don't want Him to be real. Then there is your description of the "harshness" of surrendering to Christ's love; why should you find love harsh? Third is the odd ambiguity of your comment that Jesus was a breath of fresh air after millennia, "and in my case," you add, "after pages of erratic and ineffective fathering." When you wrote these words, were you thinking of the pages of the Bible, saying that Israel had poor fathering from God? Or were you thinking of the pages of your life, saying that you had poor fathering from your earthly dad? Finally, there is your reaction to the standup comedian whom you mentioned in the longer, uncut version of your letter — the one who said that he isn't a Christian because if Christianity is true, "I'm scr***d." You said, "His sentiments aren't far from my own." That brought me up short. If God offers you redemption, as you admit He does, then why should you think that you're "scr***d"?

A clue to these puzzles lies in your three-pointed barb that God's love is "particular, far from universal and certainly not unconditional." Let's take these three phrases one by one.

As to God's love being "particular," it's certainly true that He doesn't love the abstraction "humanity." Instead He loves each human being personally, "particularly." I don't see how you can object to that — unless it's the very intimacy of His love that makes you queasy. As to his love not being "universal," I certainly agree that He has endowed us with freedom to reject that love and put ourselves beyond the possibility of experiencing it. But as I explained last month, the only way to make it impossible for us to reject His love would have been to destroy free will, which would also have made it impossible to accept His love in a meaningful way. As to His love not being "unconditional" — well, now we come to the crux of the matter. It's certainly true that the offer of redemption has conditions. Is that why you're so afraid of being "scr***d" — because you refuse to submit to them? You say you want "screaming honesty," so let's be honest, even if honesty makes you scream. What about these conditions that bother you so much?

What they amount to is a demand that we repent our wrongdoing and trustingly submit ourselves to Him. Conditions like that don't show that He doesn't love us perfectly, but that He does. They can't be eliminated because they arise from the nature of redemption itself. God is saying "I love you too much to be indifferent to the things that destroy you — but I cannot cure you of those things unless you offer yourself to me to be cured!"

Do you see where all of this is pointing? Let me tell you. You say that God's love is less than ideal, but your real complaint isn't that He loves you too little — it's that He loves you too much. Something in you is inimical to perfect joy; He wants to remove it, but you want to hang onto it anyway. You want Him to love you less. A passage in Psalm 51 runs like this:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.

But I suspect that you’re thinking more like this:

Fill me with joy, but do not purge me; fill me with gladness, but do not wash me.

When I jump from thy mercy onto rocks, keep me from breaking my bones.

I’m sorry, but it doesn't work like that. You're asking for an impossibility.

We come at last to the final part of your letter, where you ask what you call your "greatest question" — the one to which you say that no follower of Jesus can give a reasonable answer. You ask me how to base your life on the God of love. Seems easy, but here's the catch: You set three conditions for my answer.

Condition 1. My answer has to allow you to reject the "bad" God, whom you say isn't loving.

Condition 2. It has to allow you to embrace everything good in humanity, rather than denouncing it as fallen.

Condition 3. It has to give your life the "objectivity" that you confess it now lacks.

I might just point out that your conditions are unreasonable. It's a bit odd for you to set conditions at all, considering your complaint about God's conditions. The conditions themselves are odd too. Consider Condition 1. The God you think so bad is that "unloving" biblical God. Yet in your letter, you admit that you learned everything you know about love from being introduced to that very same biblical God. Do you want to saw off the branch that you are seated on?

But I'll surprise you. I'll accept your conditions — though I claim the privilege of interpreting them in ways that make them reasonable (which may not be the ways you had in mind). Now gird up your loins. This part of my reply to your letter requires close attention and logical reasoning. We have to think like adults, not like children.

The only way to make your third condition reasonable is to take it as meaning that your love must be based on objective realities, not subjective emotions or desires. Is there a way to satisfy this condition? Sure. You must cast aside all merely sentimental definitions of love, viewing it instead as a commitment of the will to the true good of the other person. Among other things this requires a clear understanding of what is truly good for the other person — which at times may be quite different than what the person thinks he wants. Or, in the case of self-love, than what you think you want.

The only way to make your second condition reasonable is to take it as meaning that you must distinguish between what really is good in us, and what undermines that good in us. You have to delight in the former, but condemn the latter. To put this another way, you must love fallen humanity, and for exactly this reason, you must deplore its sins. Your sins too.

The only way to make your third condition reasonable is to take it as meaning that you must reject false, self-justifying, and sentimental conceptions of God that lead away from love in the sense just explained. Instead you must seek the true God, without whose grace that love is utterly beyond us.

If you satisfy these three conditions, then your way of life will have the objectivity that you say that you seek. But see what has happened! Condition 3, taken in the only way that makes it reasonable, turns out to propose the same kind of love that the Bible proposes. Condition 2, taken in the only way that makes it reasonable, turns out to require the same attitude toward our fallenness that the Bible requires. And Condition 1, taken in the only way that makes it reasonable, turns out to demand the same view of God that the Bible demands. You have arrived at the place that you are running from.

I know that your heart is divided. The God whom you long for is different than the one whom you are trying to invent. In fact He is the God whom you denounce, but He is not as you have described Him. The Mighty One whose lovingkindness shone on your childhood now demands your allegiance as a man.

Wrestle with Him like Jacob if you must, but allow yourself to be overthrown like Jacob too. In this contest, to win is to lose. Only through submission do we conquer.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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If you have a question you'd like Professor Theophilus to consider for this column, please send it to asktheo@trueu.org. Please note, all questions that are selected for "Ask Theophilus" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.