Ben Cartwright, March 26, 2001
Throughout my life, I have heard that God loves me, and that he in fact loves all people. In this article, I will demonstrate why neither can possibly be true.
First of all, in order to say that someone loves someone else, one must have a working understanding of the word �love.� As is often the case in debates regarding religion, important words are left undefined, and because of this, nothing can ever be resolved. I find that if words are properly defined, many issues can in fact be resolved, and this one is no different. As I see it, there are basically two ways to see love: a feeling, and an action (we are here, of course, naturally throwing out one of the common uses of the word �love,� which is a feeling of fondness for a thing�e.g., �He loves sports� or �I love peanuts��as this is obviously not intended when the phrase �God loves you� is uttered).
Let us first examine the idea that God�s love may be just a feeling. Most would disagree with this from the start, but I think it is important to consider it. If I say to my wife, �I love you,� but do not at any time exhibit loving actions toward her, then is what I have said true? Of course not. Any deep sense of love�as the love of God must certainly be if it is true�must be much more than just a feeling. I�m sure my wife would be glad the feeling is there, but if I never back my feelings up with actions, they are useless. What good is it for me to �feel love� for her, but constantly berate her, abuse her, and never hug her, kiss her, protect her, give things to her, or any of the other myriad things which are demonstrations of love? And it is the same for God. If all he has is some �loving feeling� for us, but never acts lovingly toward us, then his love is useless and cannot be described as �love� at all.
Next, let us consider the idea that God has loving feelings for us, and also expresses these feelings by his actions toward us. Perhaps he feels delight in human beings, and at the same time acts lovingly toward them as well. If God loved us all equally, he would need to exhibit only loving actions toward all of us at all times. We can clearly see that this is not the case with even a casual glance at the state of the world. If God is truly all-powerful, as they say, and he chooses to allow some people to suffer, then his actions toward us (as humans) are not loving, and so he cannot be considered �loving� in this way either. I have heard that God gave us the ultimate demonstration of his love on the cross, but I fail to see it. One person�s (or God�s) death two thousand years ago is not the kind of ongoing love which I would expect to see from a God who supposedly loves all of us, and who loves us equally and unconditionally.
Some say that everything which seems like suffering is actually intended for our good�it�s just that we can�t see it. This is certainly true in my case, since I cannot see how the deaths of six million Jews can be for anyone�s good, or the starvation of thousands of children a day, or the horrible AIDS epidemic in Africa. As Bertrand Russell* points out, we cannot look solely from the point of the individual in such matters. If we are to make any meaningful assertions about God, they must be within the context of the entire human condition, and not just within the small scope of our own experience. Another casual look at the state of the world today shows us that there is a huge difference in the quality of human experience depending on which individual we consider. I might personally feel that God loves all people, but I am surely basing this on the fact that I have grown up in America, and have always had food on my plate and a warm bed to sleep in.
So the idea that God does love people in both feeling and action equally and unconditionally cannot be true. For one thing, the only way we could determine God�s feelings would be if he told us what they were, and even then he could be lying, or (more likely) the voice we are hearing is not his, but our own creation. And as far as his actions, they are absolutely not equally and unconditionally loving. They might seem that way to someone who has had an easy life, but when one takes into consideration the condition of the world, it is easy to see that this is not the case.
Now let�s travel to Africa and watch a missionary interacting with an AIDS patient there. I imagine at some point the missionary will say, �God loves you.� This seems simple enough, but what truth can possibly be contained in this statement for the dying African? He could very well think, �Perhaps God loves you, but me he does not.� And he would be right. Either God loves some people and not others (unequal), or he loves based on conditions (conditional� he loves people who do his will more than those who don�t), or his love is a feeling which never expresses itself in an action (pleasure and suffering are both random), or he does not love us at all. What else could it mean? Is there another definition of �love� that I have not considered? If it cannot be defined as either a feeling or an action or some combination of both, then can someone offer me a better definition? And if these are the only ways to define it, then one is forced to believe that either (a) God does not love one person as much as he does another, or (b) his love is based on some variable like whether or not the person follows him.
Now, I have a feeling the typical response to my arguments will go something like this: �Ben, I see what you�re saying, but what you�re not taking into account is that God�s conception of love is much higher and better than ours. Things which may not appear to be loving really are�we just can�t see it.�** This argument is, of course, a cop-out since it does not deal with the relevant issues at hand. I remind people that the same brain I�m using to form my conclusions is the brain they used to make important decisions such as the belief that the Bible is the word of God. It isn�t as if I�m using logic, and they are using faith. At some point, every Bible-believer must have used some logical criteria to decide that the Bible is the word of God. If they didn�t, they accepted it blindly, which of course means it can never be disproven to them anyway. As long as they are happy holding a belief based on the same criteria which enabled people to kill Jews or commit suicide in anticipation of riding home to Heaven on a comet. God�s logic is supposedly so much higher than ours, yet people can use it to discover important truths like the inerrancy of Scripture.
As I always say, �If God�s idea of love is different than ours, then we have no business saying that he is loving.� In other words, if his feelings and actions don�t match our definition of the word �love,� then he is not �loving.� You can�t say �God loves you� and when I object tell me I don�t understand what love is, and that none of us do, since only God does. That isn�t fair. You�re expecting me to believe your statement that God loves me, but not to use any of my understanding of the word �love� to understand what the statement means. If I don�t understand the basic idea of the sentence, it is useless for you to tell me or for me to believe it. If you don�t understand the basic idea of the sentence, how can you tell anyone they should believe it or that you believe it? It�s simple: if you can�t define �love� (or if you don�t understand it for yourself), you can�t use the word. Words are only as useful as their agreed-upon definitions. It isn�t as if there is Webster�s dictionary, and then �God�s dictionary.� We use our words to communicate, and where definitions are not agreed-upon or understood, the purpose of the words has been lost.
Another argument might go something like this: �Ben, you�re confusing God�s love with the consequences of people�s actions. God loves people, but is not going to control them, since that would take away their free will.� Ah, but to this, I again ask, �If God does not involve himself with me, for whatever reason, then in what way does he love me?� I think this is a crucial distinction. People maintain that (a) God loves people, but (b) he does not actively affect their lives, since this would violate their free will. But I assert that if he does not actively get involved, then he does not love, because love is expressed through action. And as for the �dying on the cross� argument for God�s love, that would theoretically be designed to deal with a problem (sin). The expression of love which it would represent would only be a secondary effect. Where is the ongoing love which is present in any loving relationship?
A brief summary might look like this:
-if God is involved in people�s lives, he does not love them, since it is clear from the state of the world that human beings are not as a whole being protected, provided for, etc. by some unseen, outside source. In other words, he may be involved, but what he is doing is not loving (it could be argued that some people�s lives represent the work of a loving God, but this creates the problems of why God would love some more than others).
-if God is not involved in people�s lives (the only other option), then he does not love them, since the definition of love includes ongoing action.
My overall point is, the more I think about the phrase, �God loves you,� the more I realize it is meaningless, since in order for the statement to work, God cannot be held to any sort of loving actions, which are a crucial part of love. People seem to feel that God does express loving actions toward them, but they are often in a form which doesn�t seem like love, since God�s understanding of love is so much higher than theirs. If this is the case, they should not call his actions �loving.� They should make up some word like �quarging� to describe them, so that people understand not to mix this type of love up with the human understanding of it. It could then be understood that God doesn�t love people, but he �quargs� them, and this is better than love.
So, rest easy knowing that God quargs you with all his heart. But make no mistake�God doesn�t love you.
* Why I Am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell.
** Speaking from a biblical perspective, God�s love is often described in human terms (this is no shock since God is very anthropomorphized in the Bible), and so cannot be elevated to some �higher level� anyway. If God loves us as a father loves his children, then that is the kind of love we really can understand.
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