Jan 3 Fri
Why does God judge based on good and evil?
Is it a capricious choice that God could have made in some other way? Is it a “power thing” that God imposed, intruding on our “autonomy?” At the very least, couldn’t God have made “loving” something more explicit?
No.
“Love,” first of all, is not some thing. It is Someone: “God Is Love.” And because Love needs more than one, it already points to the Trinity-in-Unity: Three Persons, One God.
Love is not, therefore, primarily a feeling or an emotion. It is not a reaction. It is a reality shared by persons in a relationship. In the Blessed Trinity, they share Goodness. Each Person loves in the other what is perfect in Himself – Life, Fidelity, Truth.
Man, made in God’s image and likeness, is made to share in a relationship: “Male and female He created them,” and “it is not good for man to be alone.” They are called to share relationships based on God’s image and likeness, i.e., sharing goodness. Thus, the true essence of love is desiring the best for the other.
When God invites me into a relationship with Him, what can I share? God is infinite; I am not. God is perfect; I am not. God is all-wise; I am not. What I can share is goodness, although within my created, limited capacity. But that is still real goodness.
That goodness is not a feeling, not a wish. It is real: the life of God in me is called “sanctifying grace.” It is the Life of God I share. I cannot share it when I am attached to what is anti-God and anti-divine-life, i.e., mortal sin.
Salvation is a proposal for a relationship, in and with Love, based on sharing God’s grace. God, as a true lover, proposes. But I, the beloved, always remain free to reject the proposal.
When God speaks of sin as leading to death, it is not because God has established some arbitrary connection between the two, but because, when I turn away from God as the Source of my life and being, the only thing left in me is death and non-being. When I sin, I choose something objectively evil that destroys me. And God loves me; he does not want my ruin.
In the Greek mythology, the deities were not better than men, only bigger. Zeus would be quite comfortable in modern Hollywood. The pagan gods exacted obedience through power, not love.
God is not a threat to my autonomy. God’s designs and my human fulfillment stand in a direct, not inverse ratio. I become the best of myself by accomplishing what unites me to God.
This, of course, also exposes the lie behind the slogan “love is blind.” Love will always be – and must be – measured by a shared, objective, mutual, common good (otherwise it is not love). That common good is more than a feeling, sentiment, or want. In the case of sex, it involves the objective good of life: of a third person proceeding from the love of two, so that the domestic trinity can mirror the Eternal One.
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