For Father Richard, God’s unconditional love is itself a movement that transforms us:

This whole human project pivots around Divine Love. Because our available understanding of love is almost always conditioned on “I love you if” or “I love you when,” most people find it almost impossible—apart from real transformation—to comprehend or receive Divine Love. In fact, we cannot understand it in the least, unless we “stand under” it, like a cup beneath a waterfall. When we truly understand Divine Love, our politics, our anthropology, our economics, and our movements for justice will all change.

If we are to believe the biblical revelation, it seems that God does not love the people Israel if they change (as they first imagine), but so that they can change. Divine Love is not a reward for good behavior, as we first presume it to be; it is a larger Life, an energy and movement that we can participate in—and then, almost in spite of ourselves—we behave differently. It seems few of us go there willingly. For some reason, we’re afraid of what we most want.

The prophet Hosea tells the people of Israel poetically and succinctly, “I will love Unloved: I will say to No-People-of-Mine, ‘You are my people,’ and then you will answer back, ‘You are my God’” (Hosea 2:24). That is the divine pattern, although we almost always get it backwards. For some reason, we think that if we love God, God will love us. When, in reality, it is because God loves us that we can return the compliment. God does not love us because we are good; God loves us because God is good.

Up to the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE, the Jewish people believed—as so many of us do today—in retributive justice. “Tit for tat,” we might say. It went something like this: mistake –> punishment ­–> conversion –> consolation/salvation. Most people accept that logic to this day because it makes God and the world feel fair and just. Reward and retribution are in our hardwiring. They are the plot line for almost everything—except for the evolving biblical story, beginning with the Torah and evolving through the prophets.

During and after the exile, the prophets started seeing a clearly different pattern at work in God’s dealing with people. The new pattern looks like this: mistake –> consolation/salvation –> conversion. It is a total turnaround of consciousness! As Isaiah is able to hear from God, “The shame of your youth you shall forget . . . My love shall never fall away from you” (Isaiah 54:4, 10). It seems that inside the Divine logic the answer to failure is, in fact, more love!

Divine Love is the interpretive key to everything. Unloved people do bad things. Loved people do good things. It is that simple.

___________________________

Sarah Young

There is no condemnation for those that are in Me. I died to set you free, live freely in Me. You live in Me when you surrender, connect and are living out of Me.

Psalm 23:1-2
The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters

Isaiah 30:21
Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.

John 10:27
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me

Romans 8:1-2
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life …

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