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MARCH 9, 1996 VOL. 174 NO, 8

The Eclipse of Love for God

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Almost all Christians talk approvingly about love for others; some talk confidently about God's love for us; but few are willing to talk about their love for God.

By EDWARD COLLINS VACEK

HEN DAVID HARE INTERVIEWED CLERGY as part of his research for his play, "Racing Demons," he ran into a problem: None of the priests wanted to talk about God. One of the disturbing questions his play rai.ses is whether contemporary Christians, with the exception of a few fanatical fundamentalists, are coticenied about loving God. In my own conversations with Christians. I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God's love for us. but few are willing to talk about their love for God. When I press them to say what it means to love God, some of them in fact detiy that we can love God directly, many admit that they don't give mueh thought to love for God and most deny that there is any ethical obligation to do so. They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but they have no such thoughts about neglecting God. In short, many eontemporary Christians subscribe to Jesus' second great commandment, but not to his first. In the 17th century, some historians of spirituality point out. people thought the essence of Christian life was to draw close to God. After the 18th century, however, the point of Christian life became service of neighbor. Today, for example, people generally consider Mother Teresa a saint. But most people do so because of her devotion to the poor. Seldom does anyone say she is a saint because her love of God is so intense, though that onee was the primary meaning of sanetity. Contemporary Objections. When I ask my students, "What do you mean by love for God?" they usually give one of four answers. Some volunteer that loving Gixl means keeping the commandments, like not kiUing or stealing. Most say that loving God means helpitig one's neighbor. The more theologically educated add that it means taking eare of the poor. Lastly, those steeped in our psychological age share that loving God means caring for one's own EDWARD COLLINS VACEK, S.J,, is a.ssociate professor of moral theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology and author of Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Georgetown Univ. Press. 1994). This year he holds the McKeever Chair in moral theology at St. John's University, Jamaica, N.Y.

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deepest self. All seem not to notice that atheists affirm these four practices. Many theologians have also set aside Jesus" first great commandment. They do so for theological reasons. Some note, for example, that the pertect God has no need of us; hence our love for God does nothing for God. Indeed, love for neighbor rightly enjoys a certain advantage over love for God, since the fonner is good both for the neighbor and lor us. Other theologians, following the strand of Karl Rahner's thought that stressed anonymous Christianity, claim that the one necessary love is love for neighbor. In their view. Matthew 25 shows that we do not have to think about God; all we must do is serve the neighbor. Thus atheists, paradoxically, may be "more Christian" than believers since those who set aside time to develop their relationship with God through prayer and reading may be wasting precious time and energy tbat could better be used to help needy neighbors. Supporters of pluralism are also inclined to reject tbe moral demand that everyone love God. For them, such love is an option, of course; but tbere are other options, Jesus" cotnniand is for religious people, not for nonbelievers. Even for believers, love for God is sujiererogatory. not an ethical obligation. Furthermore, ordinary people recognize that, even though we can perform certain behaviors on command, we cannot will ourselves to have emotions. Emotions, including love, are not tbe sorts of acts we can just decide to have. Hence, many hold that wbile we are morally obliged to do the vt'orks of love, there can be no ethical requirement to love God. Some theologians, following ceitain mysties. raise another dilculty. God is transcendent and utterly incomprehensible. But. since we cannot love what we cannot know, we cannot love God. These Christians are joined by others who hold thatin the dai'kness of this post-deathof-Gtxi and post-Holix;aust eraall we can do is to wait patiently tor some new revelation from God. We sbould not expect ourselves to love tbe God who is uneanny, awesome, unfathomable mystery and who seems more absent than present. Others argue that love for God is not really central in Christianity. Classical tbeological traditions have centered on obedience to God's will or on tiiist in God's promises, not on love for God. Si. Paul, for exiunpie, speaks rarely of love for God. Instead he champions faith in Gtxl, and for him the whole law boils down to love of neighbor (Gal.

There is a great difference between seeking the truth and being in a personal relationship with God. Those who love God live differently.

5:14. 6:2; Rom. 13: 8-10). Pauline tbeologiatis note that it is God's love, not our own. that flows in our hearts. Tbus, tbeology encourages tbe current tendency to collapse the first great commandment into the second. Although John wrote, "those who love God must love tbeir brothers and sisters also" (1 Jn. 4:21), thereby indicating that love for neighbor presupposes love for God. today a number of theological positions conspire to suggest that love for neighbor suffices. Where Jesus urged that we love God with our whole mind, heart, sou! and strength, today we urge one another actively to love our neigbbor andharder for manyto love our own selves.

Direct Love for God. I want to argue that love of creatures is not enough. Just as we must eat and tbink and play, or else we wither and die, and just as we must develop good relations witb other human beings if we are to develop as persons, so also we cannot hope to become fully human unless we love God. We are essentially relational beings. We are stunted when our relational potentials are unfulfilled. We have a native desire for God, and our hearts will shrivel up unless tbey beat for God. Hence, in order to become fully who we are, we must be growing in love for God. The off-putting implication of this otherwise pioussounding claim is that atheists or agnostics or even exclusively neigbbor-loving Christians are living objectively unethical lives. That claim strikes many as too haish. Let me offer thiee clarifications. First, I am speaking of wbat objectively ought to be the ease. I do not say that sincere atheists, agnostics or neigbbor-ioving Christians are sinners. Presumably they are following tbeir conscience. If so. tbey are morally good. Nevertheless, tbeir consciences are mistaken. Their understanding of buman life is ineomplete. Their life is not all it should be. Second, my fellow tbeologians. influenced by people Hke Rabner. doubtless will argue that atheists, if they are sincere and not just lazy, seek the truth. But. since God is truth itself, tbese atheists are in fact seeking God. All they get wrong, so to speak, is the name. To tbis position, I offer a personalist's response. Existentially, there is a great difference between seeking the truth and being in a personal relationship with God. Those wbo love Gtxl live differently. They engage in time-tested ways of developing this relationship, e.g., celebrating tbe Eucharist or participating in retreats. They pray and are attentive for a personal word from God. They contemplate and rely on Jesus

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Christ. Those wbo are not in a personal relationship with the Christian God will not do these sorts of things, and so they cannot similarly develop this most important dimension of human life. Third, the lives of people without love for God can be morally right in other aspects. We human beings usually are quite ethical in one part of our lives, wobbly in another part and downright wrong in yet another part. Indeed, ihere is embarrassing social science evidence that in the rest of their lives atheists are, on average, better human beings than Christians. Dostoevski notwithstanding, atheists quite often are more honest, more generous and more courageous than Christians. Still, in one very important area of their lives, those who do not love God are deficient human beings. Just as a man can be good to his children but neglect his wife, so many people who are otherwise wonderful persons lack this demanding and uplifting relationship. In shon. it is not enough just to love our fellow human beings. Sincere conscience and anonymous theism are not enough. To give a parallel: Imagine that I put out food for a stray dog I happen to like, but that unbeknownst to me the dog belongs to a rich but stingy woman I despise. Physically, one might say that I am serving the rich woman, but morally speaking that is not what I am doing. Similarly, giving water to a stranger is quite different from desiring to serve Christ. Our explicit intentions make a great difference in our moral life.

It is also not enough to love creatures explicitly as a way of showing love to God. At times, we can and must also direct our love immediately iuid directly to God. Of course, one way of expressing love for God is to care for God's creation. But much as taking the garbage out for sick neighbors is no substitute for directly developing an interpersonal relationship with them, so too doing good works to show love for God presupposes other activities devoted to directly loving God. A Contemporary Challenge. Every age has its centriil religious concept. At one time the question of faith energized. Today Christians often answer the question "Do you believe in God?" with little investment. The question "Do you trust God?" is more involving, but it still leaves in abeyance the way we live our lives. A question that will challenge all of us today is this: "Do you love God?" That question evokes the endlessness of our heart's quest as well as the incomprehensibility of God. and it gives us an absorbing center for our lives. I imagine that when Jesus went off to pray he was not just gathering up energy to love his fellow human beings, nor was he simply purifying and developing his inner life. Rather, he chose to spend time with his Abba. He wanted and needed that time. He prayed, and in that prayer he united his mind and heart with God. Our love for God requires something similar. How might such a relationship develop? The first step

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is one that, generally speaking, women seem to understand more quickly than men. That step is to accept God's love for us. In other words, our first response is noi to return love to God. but rather to let God's love affect or change us. We deny God's transfonning influence if we rush to return love to God or to spread love to our neighbor. Sitting with eyes closed and hands open, we let God's love touch and move us; there begins our salvation. Thereafter, we can and should love God in return. Love means that we affectively affinn God's goodness. We want to be close to God, and we rejoice when we are close. At the same time our love for God will not long let us rest, but moves us to penetrate ever more appreciatively into God's goodness. Correlative I y, we are disconsolate when we are alienated from God. We miss God when God no longer seems near. Our love for God also makes us want to cooperate with God in doing what God wants to do. That leads us to be involved in creation. Hence love for God at one level moves us into the incomprehensibility of God and at another level moves us both to cherish the world and to want to overcome its ills and injustices. Clearly, this love for God is not reducible to texts read, prayers said or gifts offered. It is not simply a matter of obedience or trust. Rather, this love for God can and should become the dominant, organizing emotional center of our whole lives. Moses Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher, argued that love for God should be similar to the passion a man has for a woman. For Aquinas, diose who love like this constantly think of one another, constantly try to please one another. This pr(.K:ess of attention grows and grows until it becomes a pervasive feature of one's whole emotional life. So it can be with our love for God. There will be periods of rapid and intense growth in this love. Births of babies and failures in achieving goals are prime times for spurts in our love for God. Then come quieter periods in which we just maintain a good relationship. The quiet periods prepare the way for a deeper relationship that we cannot force, but for which we can hope. As we grow in love for God, this love becomes more a pail of our very identity. It more and more informs who we iue. For example, if asked to do a new job, one of the first questions that enters our mind is how this new task might affect our relationship with God. Before closhig this essay. I want to describe briefly three forms of love for God. We can have an agapic love.

It is not enough just to love our fellow human beings. Sincere conscience and anonymous theism are not enough.

an eras love or a philia love for God. Normally we will have all three mixed together. Agape, as I use the term, means love of something for its own sake. So, with an agapic love for God, we are not concerned for ourselves but are devoted to God for God's sake. Christian tradition posed an extremely provocative question to smoke out this kind of love; "If it would please God just a bit. would you be willing to suffer in hell forever?" The question, of course, is unreal, and the Cathohc Church condemns the teaching that we must have pure love for God. Nevertheless, the question quickly clarifies where our tlnal loyalties lie. Agape is represented by the cross of Christ. That cross says we may have to give up our lives in order to be loyal to God. Second, eros means loving someone for our own sake. In the traditional act of contrition, Christians have prayed that they are hearily sorry for their sins because they dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because these sins offend God. Their sorrow over offending God expresses agape. Their dread about losing God and going to hell expresses eros. An eros love for God is a genuine love. It is a biblical love, and it is quite Catholic. We love God for the good we gain in being close to God. Third, we have a philia love when we love God for the sake of the "friendship" we share with God. Our Jewish ancestors fornied covenants with God. and through baptism we Christians fonn a new covenant with God. We are God's people, and God is "our Gtxl." We live out of this relationship. We do religious things like sing in church, but we also relax at the seashore and work hard at the soup kitchen. The difference between us and unbelievers is that we want to do these things as ptirt of ourrelationshipwith G(.K1. Growing in that desire is what it means to become a saint. At the end of this essay, let me make it clear that in speaking of love for God, I do not mean to exclude love for neighbor or self or world. Rather, love for God leads us to cooperate with God's love of the world. Hence strange as it seemsone of the reasons we want to love ourselves and others is that we want thereby to cooperate with God's love for us. In a profoundly religious sense, we are aware that the ordinary and usually best way that God can love creatures is through our love for them. Still, although love for neighbor and love for self are essential to the Christian hfe. my concern here is that we must not let these wholesome Christian loves eclipse our love for God. That love should be the sun of our lives. O

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