From Love - and finally into Love

From love - and finally into love

We began this series with a question:

What if love is the foundation of reality?

We normally tell the story of existence something like this:

Matter appeared. Matter became life. Life developed brains.

Brains somehow produced consciousness. Conscious beings eventually discovered love.

And some of them began wondering whether there might be a God.

But what if we have part of the story backwards?

Christianity makes an extraordinary claim:

“God is love.” - 1 John 4:8

Suppose we take that seriously.

Suppose the ultimate reality isn't unconscious matter -

but Conscious Love.

Then perhaps consciousness isn't something that appeared near the end of the universe.

Maybe Conscious Love was there at the beginning.

And Love implies relationship.

Relationship requires awareness.

So consciousness may belong much nearer the beginning of our story.

Perhaps creation doesn’t cause matter to eventually evolve into conscious beings -

rather does Conscious Love eventually bring other conscious entities into existence.

Why?

For relationship.

But genuine relationship requires something more.

There must be a you who is genuinely not me.

There must be individuality.

Otherness.

Freedom.

Perhaps this helps us understand why there is a physical universe.

Bodies give us boundaries.

Space separates us.

Time gives us histories.

In the physical world our choices have consequences.

We become genuinely distinct persons.

Jesus used a beautiful image:

“I am the vine; you are the branches.” - John 15:5

The branches are genuinely distinct.

But none is self-existent.

Their life continues to come from the vine.

Perhaps something similar is true of us.

We are not God.

We are not fragments of God.

We are genuinely ourselves.

And yet every moment of our existence ultimately depends upon the Conscious Love from which we came.

But individuality and freedom create risk.

If I can genuinely love you, I can also fail to love you.

If I can freely give, I can selfishly take.

If I can protect, I can attack.

And so the possibility of Love brings with it the possibility of broken relationship.

Perhaps that is where moral evil comes from.

Not because God created evil.

Not because evil is some eternal force competing with Love.

But because genuinely free beings can distort good capacities and damage relationships.

And then comes judgment.

But perhaps judgment isn't Love temporarily abandoning its own nature.

Perhaps judgment is Love bringing everything into the light.

The truth about what we have done.

The truth about what has been done to us.

The consequences we never understood.

The wounds we concealed.

The excuses we made.

The people we hurt.

Nothing dismissed.

Nothing hidden.

Nothing forgotten.

And why reveal all of this?

Not so that God can inflict suffering for its own sake.

But because broken relationships cannot be healed without truth.

Truth makes recognition possible.

Recognition makes genuine remorse possible.

Remorse makes transformation possible.

Transformation makes reconciliation possible.

And reconciliation must include the person who was harmed.

The victim must be heard.

Their suffering must be fully known.

Their wounds must be healed.

Their freedom must be respected.

Reconciliation cannot simply be commanded.

Love cannot repair a violation of freedom by committing another violation of freedom.

So perhaps God's work continues -

patiently,

unfailingly,

truthfully,

lovingly

until reconciliation becomes genuinely possible.

But what if reconciliation has not happened before death?

Of course, many relationships are never reconciled during this life.

People die still estranged from one another.

Victims die without receiving an apology.

If death ends God's opportunity to heal and reconcile, then countless relationships must remain broken forever.

But why should death have that power?

If God is the source of our conscious existence, and if our existence continues beyond physical death, perhaps God's work of truth, healing and transformation continues as well.

Death would then not be the deadline for reconciliation.

If Love is truly foundational, then death need not mark the point at which Love gives up.

Perhaps God's patient work continues for as long as it takes:

until truth is understood,

until repentance becomes genuine,

until wounds are healed,

until freedom can respond to Love,

and until reconciliation becomes possible.

And eventually we arrive somewhere extraordinary.

Not simply back where we started.

Because at the beginning there was:

God's love for creation.

But at the end there can be:

Creation's freely reciprocated love for God and for one another.

Something has happened between those two points.

We have become ourselves.

We have experienced existence.

We have made choices.

We have created relationships.

We have sometimes damaged them.

We have experienced love and loss.

We have learned.

We have encountered truth.

We have been changed.

And ultimately we have become capable of freely participating in the Love from which we came.

Perhaps the great story of existence therefore looks something like this:

Conscious Love
↓
Relationship
↓
Physical environment
↓
Created consciousness
↓
Individuality
↓
Freedom
↓
Experience
↓
Love and brokenness
↓
Truth
↓
Transformation
↓
Healing
↓
Reconciliation
↓
Freely reciprocated love

And perhaps that helps us understand something Paul wrote:

“For from him and through him and to him are all things.” - Romans 11:36

From him – Conscious Love

Through him – created environment and conscious beings.

To him – eventual reconciliation of all things.

Perhaps creation is not ultimately a test designed to divide humanity into those God will keep and those God will abandon.

Perhaps it is a journey.

A journey that begins in Love.

A journey in which genuinely distinct conscious beings emerge and become themselves.

A journey containing real freedom, real consequences and sometimes terrible brokenness.

But a journey throughout which Love never ceases to be the fundamental reality.

And perhaps its destination is what Paul describes:

“through him to reconcile to himself all things” - Colossians 1:20

Not some things.

All things.

This is the proposition towards which this whole series has been moving:

The fundamental reality is Conscious Love.

Within that love we are first known.

From that love we receive our distinct conscious existence.

Through physical existence we acquire individuality, experience and freedom.

Through freedom we learn both the beauty of love and the terrible consequences of its rejection.

Through truth, transformation and reconciliation, what has been broken can ultimately be healed.

And finally we come freely to know and participate in the love by which we have always been known.

Perhaps that is what salvation ultimately is.

Not escape from God's anger.

Not escape from creation.

Not even simply survival after death.

But the fulfilment of the reason conscious beings exist at all:

To know.

To be known.

To love.

To be loved.

And, finally, to live in reconciled relationship with God and with one another.