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LIFE MEETS THEOLOGY:

God's Love Is Not Enough

by Greg Williamson (c) 2008

COPYRIGHT RELATED INFO

UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS

ARE FROM THE  New American Standard Bible.

LIFE: Recently my two boys (ages 7 and 4 1/2) and I discovered Davie and Goliath. According to the one-hour special produced in 2003, beginning in the 1950's the children's claymation television series became wildly popular literally around the world for about three decades. It then fell off the radar for about 15 years until the main characters were featured in, of all things, an advertisement for Mountain Dew. The commercial sparked new interest which resulted in plans for a whole new series. Despite technological advances in the art of animation, the new series will be produced in the same painstaking manner as the original: miniature models crafted by hand and filmed in stop-motion photography.

My boys and I are really enjoying the original series, several DVD's of which I happened across at a great price. Produced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), each episode features the adventures -- and misadventures -- of Davie and his dog Goliath as they learn valuable lessons about God's love and care for people. 

According to the ELCA officials interviewed as part of the "making of" special, the dominant, central, overriding theme of every episode of Davie and Goliath is God's love. More specifically: God loves children, and God loves people. Which makes the series a much welcomed contrast to what passes for contemporary television fare.

I am concerned, however, with the direction to be taken by the new series, which apparently will be more "inclusive" and "diverse" in scope. This should come as no surprise, really, since the ELCA is well-known for its liberalism, which can be defined as "[a m]ode of theological thought that favors an anti-dogmatic and humanitarian reconstruction of the Christian faith and a readiness to subordinate historic Christian traditions and truths to fashionable intellectual and theological compromises" (Nelson's New Christian Dictionary).

The pilot for the new Davie and Goliath series, "Snowboard Christmas," has Davie learning about the legitimacy of other religious faiths, specifically Judaism and Islam. Without having seen it, I would not be at all surprised if the takeaway message were something along the lines of: "God loves everyone, regardless of their particular religion."

As with so much well-intentioned "Christian" television programming, the problem is not with what is said so much as with what is left unsaid.

THEOLOGY: A one-sided, overly simplified emphasis on God's love is a hallmark of liberal theology and hence the trademark of several mainline Christian denominations, including the ELCA. To be sure, God's love is foundational to all that he says and does -- it is, in fact, "the very substance and nature of God" (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology). And so the apostle John could write that "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16), which is to say "that all [God's] activity is loving activity. If He creates, He creates in love; if He rules, He rules in love; if He judges, He judges in love" (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology).

The main problem is that we human beings tend to use our own selves -- including our fallible opinions and our limited experiences -- as our chief point of reference. And so if someone is told that "God loves you," that person may immediately experience anything from a profound sense of comfort to a suffocating sense of dread, depending on his/her personal experience with love. And so to truly understand what "God loves you" means, we need to truly understand what God's Word, the Bible, teaches regarding God and his love for humanity. And while God loves us enough to continue reaching out to us even when we repeatedly spurn his efforts, he also loves us enough to allow us to experience the consequences of our actions. Ultimately, to experience personal, saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is to embrace God's love while, conversely, to reject Jesus as personal Lord and Savior is to reject God's love.

Here John 3:16-18 is especially helpful: "16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God" (NET Bible). As one commentator aptly states:

The presentation of the good news of God's love offers only two options: to believe or to perish. Eternal life, which is accepted by believing, is a gift of God and brings with it the fullest blessings God can bestow. To perish does not mean to cease to exist; it means to experience utter failure, futility, and loss of all that makes existence worthwhile. Notwithstanding this gloomy picture of "lost" or "perish," God's purpose toward man is positive. God's attitude is not that of suspicion or hatred but of love. He is not seeking an excuse to condemn men but is rather endeavoring to save them. His purpose in sending Jesus into the world was to show his love and to draw men to himself. If they are lost, it is because they have not committed themselves to God, the only source of life. (Expositor's Bible Commentary)