Overwhelmed By Love

I have heard it said, over the years, that God is a gentleman. This phrase often shows up when the concept of free will is under discussion.

The very idea of free will is, to some, a philosophical outrage.  Others complicate it to the point where the desire to comprehend it is threatened by a desire to abandon the pursuit of understanding it altogether.  This is because they find it so complicated that they become confused and then dismayed.  The confusion turns into disarray and, eventually, into despair.

We do not – cannot – understand God. As He tells us in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

It is arguable whether or not we even understand love. But we do (sort of) understand being in love.  Most of us remember a lot of the learning curve. One of the more painful lessons is that it is impossible to make another person love us the way we love them. Neither can we make ourselves love another just because they love us.

An Abrupt Shift Of Perspective

Omniscient, omnipotent God, both creator and sustainer of the Universe should, one supposes, be capable of complete control of His creation. Certainly our practice of prayer implies this, among other things. It follows that He could make us love Him, or at the very least have created us in a manner such that we cannot help but love Him.

But clearly He has not done this. We all know enough to understand that inserting such a degree of mechanization into his creation would rob any love we offered Him of meaning and, in some sense, transform His love for us into a kind of dutiful reciprocity.

Without freedom of will, choice is illusory – and that illusion is meaningless.

Does God Choose To Love Us?

I would not presume to try to answer that question, at east in terms of professing to discern inside God’s freedom of will. But He does love us – this we know from many evidences beyond reproach.

On reflection, I think that the question is flawed. God chose to make us in such a way that He can love us. He created us and has loved us before, during, and ever since He created us.  The very first sentence of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” reads:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.

Everything else seems to follow from that. God loves us, and made us so that when we do love Him back, we do so meaningfully, both for ourselves and for Him.

Back To Middle School

Earlier I mentioned that one of the more painful lessons in life is that it is impossible to make another person love us the way we love them, nor can we make ourselves love another just because they love us.

God, being unimaginably perfect in every way, must also be perfectly lovable. He is also overwhelming, so much so that the Prophets and even the Apostles were afraid to see God, or to be too close to Him lest they die. Peter even asked Jesus to depart from him because of his sinfulness. Those of us not awestruck and timid – at the least – when the thought of being in His presence occurs to us are, I would guess, insulated by some sense of safety derived from our assessment that it is unlikely to come to that for us personally,  at least in this life.

I return, as I sometimes have over the years, to the images of Middle School romance. (In my day Middle School was Junior High. Some may still call it Junior High.) Not because I am thinking of our relationship with God or God’s relationship with us in terms of immaturity, but in terms of the vast gulf in status between us and God. In my lifetime, I have never felt differences in status the way I did in that time and place.

Meeting God would be like my middle school self, already insecure and uncertain, being thrust into the presence of a discussion group of Nobel Laureates, famous writers, distinguished scientists, media stars, music stars, and powerful politicians and having the  chairman of the group – say, the President of the United States – ask me a pointed question about something I had spent the previous day shooting my mouth off over. (Oof.  Sometimes I have too much imagination!)

Some Of The Consequences Of Omniscience

Here is one dim glimpse of one of God’s dilemmas. Think of God as the Biggest, Richest, and Best Being on any college campus.  As such He has the eternal problems of the outstanding – getting others to look beyond the power and wealth and talent and looks, and so on, in order to connect with Him.  He does, after all, want to be connected intimately, honestly, and directly with everyone.

I went to college with a young man who was born with a multi-million dollar trust fund and a last name synonymous with great wealth. His relationships were always haunted by his fear of people who wanted to be his friend for ulterior motives. Eventually he relaxed into his college relationships, but it did leave me thinking about one of God’s relationship advantages. He knows for certain the hearts of those who come to Him. He also knows our Human nature and understands our difficulty with any kind of purity in our means and motives.

Utter honesty is not something we humans are particularly good at doing or facing. Given that we know God is both omniscient and good, we know He must be honest in ways that are unimaginable to us . . . for not only is He honest by default, He is honest while knowing all things related to all other things.

So God knows the sincerity of our prayers and petitions. He also knows all our motivations.  He knows those we are consciously aware of and even those of which we are not aware.  And he knows, too, those motivations we have hidden from ourselves and even those we have not had to hide because they are buried deeply in our subconscious.

God Knows What We Can Handle

It follows that God knows what we can handle, in more ways than one. He knows how much exposure to His real self we can handle without being overwhelmed. He limits our exposure not only to protect us, but to respect us by granting us the dignity of retaining our freedom. God does not permit His love to overwhelm us, unless and until we ask to be overwhelmed. But even then His preference is that we be overwhelmed the way the writer of the Song of Songs was – with genuine, full spectrum, authentic and complete love.

And that is one answer to those who wonder why God seems to hide himself when standing forth in direct glory would relieve us of uncertainty and doubt.

It is not that God does not want to be more well known, more directly perceived, more fully in communion with us. It is that He refuses to ravish us, refuses to make us blind with His overwhelming light.

And so He sends teachers, prophets, servants who reveal Him and teach us how to know Him more fully and directly.  As we get to know Him better, then paraphrasing the words of the old hymn, we see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and can follow Him more nearly.

Always Safely

Which means that of all the ways we waste time and energy “protecting” ourselves from God is one of the worst and most wasteful things we can do. He knows us, loves us, and will protect us from our own impetuosity.

I’ve heard it said many times that God will not send us more than we can handle. Usually this is in regard to adversity of one sort or another. But neither will God send us more of His glory and majesty than He will give us grace to handle.

Some, however, hold out in fear of being consumed by His majesty.  Others hold out due to fear of being called to some uncomfortable task, or of losing their own identity.  But such people forget that God does not send us more than we can handle – to the Enemy’s not-so-secret delight.

Over and over, when God or one of His angels appears to someone in the Bible, His first words are “Be not afraid!” One of the great Popes, perhaps the greatest I will ever live to see, adopted this as his never-failing advice.

Certainly I can think of nothing better to advise.

In working to approach closer to God, I am safe. God will not overwhelm me without my consent.  He will not undo me for as hard as it can be to believe, God wants to treasure us – you and even me. In this is a guarantee that our cramped, selfish human nature can understand.  He not only wants to love us, He wants to love the best and most wonderful version of us that we can be. And He will not unmake us as we struggle both with and against Him in our progress.

Prayer

Father, Lord Jesus, bathe me in the Holy Spirit so that I may trust myself to You completely to aid me in growth and my ultimate approach to You. Forgive my weakness, my fears, my desire to cling to what I can control myself and feel familiar and safe with.

Help me grow my trust, relinquish my fear, and reach my arms up to You and finally cry out “Abba; Father” with total trust, that as Your arms encircle me and You draw me closer, I am not being destroyed but nurtured, fed, and grown into the person You would have me to be.

These things I ask in the name of Jesus, Your beloved Son and my strength and salvation.  Amen.