Trinitarian Love

Some scientifically-minded atheists believe matter and energy just happened, that forming complex molecules just happened, and that these molecules just happened to form human life eventually. We are nothing but matter and energy and accident.

Some Deists believe that there was a Mind behind the universe. That there was some kind of Intelligence behind the physical constants that make matter possible, and the properties of atoms that make life possible. They believe that Something kick-started the universe.

Christians believe the ultimate reality is not only powerful but personal.

John once wrote the startling words:

"God is love".*

Not just that God is loving. Not just that God feels love.

But that God's very nature is love.

As early Christian theologians pondered Jesus' command to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they developed a startling idea... that God is three persons living in an eternal relationship of love.

Human beings - those created in the image of God - have this thing about love too.

You can provide every physical need of human beings... but without love, a normal human soul will wither. Humans yearn for love like oxygen; they despair without it. They kill themselves believing they lack or don't deserve it.

Just as God is a community of love, human beings are designed to live in a community of love. This is what we long for, and this is what brings us alive.

We often find a sense of place and belonging by being part of a family; part of a tribe; part of a tradition. We value the stories of our family, because they help to tell us who we are and whose we are.

The Christian story is about an expansive family. It proceeds from the Father, Son and Spirit who invite us into a great big family of love. We are invited to see other humans as loved ones of this God too; brothers and sisters of immense worth.

The early Christian communities embraced Jews and Gentiles, adults and children, the weak, the widows, the poor, the rich, the slaves, the free... any and every social class was welcome to join a new kind of loving family.

In the stumbling and imperfect story of the church from then until now, the idea of the value of every human being has kept reforming the church and society for good. Every human being matters, because God loves every human being.

God IS love. It's the claim that has changed the world.

* I John 4:8

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