There was a popular song years ago that asked the question: “I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder who…who wrote the book of love?” Of course the focus was on romantic love between two people, but the question remains relevant today. And it is especially relevant for Christians. It’s the Lord our God who wrote the “book” of love. For good or bad that’s who we have to deal with. The Lord is our God; He’s our Savior; He’s the one with whom we have to do. There’s no getting around Him. We can ignore Him; refuse to believe He exists; insist that He’s a figment of our imagination. Or maybe imagine Him through our own lens, reducing Him to something we can understand, or, better yet, maybe something we can manipulate, or at least something we can tolerate. But it won’t do. He is who He is whether we like it or not; whether we believe it or not. It all comes down to Him. All that’s good and all that’s bad has its roots in Him. How can that be? Some have suggested that the source of all that exists is both good and bad: meaning good and evil not only have the same source, but that the source is both good and evil! This means that the contentions of our existence are the product of a mixed bag that expresses itself through what’s been created. From this point of view contention is fundamental to our existence because the source of our existence embodies contention within itself. How else can we understand it? Another way of saying it is that contention and conflict are expressions of the nature of ultimate reality. The why of this assessment isn’t entirely clear, it’s just the nature of things.

Obviously this doesn’t express a traditional Christian view. However the contest between good and evil even within a Christian framework isn’t easily understood. It’s a conundrum! Where’d the devil come from? Why did God create those whom He knew would rebel and instigate much of the havoc that the world exhibits? Why are things the way they are? Why not just create a world in which people could live happily ever after with their creator God? I believe the answer is that the world exists as it does because God exists as He does. What is the Lord’s nature? What is the fundamental feature of our God, the essence of the Lord? You know what it is, or you should know. The fundamental aspect of the Lord’s nature is LOVE! “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is Love,” Right? (1 John 4:8) “For God so loved the world that He gave” us a Savior. (John 3:16) What does that tell us? God loves so He creates the devil and the world in which we exist. Then later He enters that cursed world through the Son to save us. God loves us so He sustains a world for us to live in that currently seems to be on a path to self-destruction. The response to such accusations is to focus on sin—disobedience to God. It’s our fault! We went our own way and God cursed us! That may be true but it still doesn’t answer the question: why did the Lord create what He knew would produce all the havoc of this world? First the devil, then us!

In order to understand this I think it helps to consider that the Lord presents Himself to us as our Father. That term—father—means a lot of different things to people; some good, some not so good. This is especially true in today’s environment where traditional roles for men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers are being challenged and often redefined (I’m speaking from a modern American point of view). Traditionally a father has been regarded as a provider. He and his wife produce children and then the parents spend their lives raising their family. In many respects the process itself is the central feature of their lives. It’s what they do; it’s who they are. Is that how we understand God as our Father? His reason for existence is us? That kind of makes us the central feature of everything. We’re the center of the universe? I don’t think so. If we’re invested in the scriptures—and we should be—then we’re given the answer immediately when it’s declared in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Simple…case solved! In the beginning God created everything…then He created people. He’s a creative God; we’re just part of that creation. However, what do we do with this? If the Lord is the beginning and the end as stated in Revelation 1:8, then it’s all about Him. He creates all that exists for Himself, and all that’s good and all that’s bad is created for His own pleasure. Is that it? When I reflect on this it sounds evil to me, and I say that as someone who loves the Lord with all my heart—not perfectly but I’m working on it! I may not understand Him, but I love Him, and I know Him well enough to trust Him anyway. And it’s not surprising that we don’t understand our Father God completely, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t inquire of Him for understanding.

The Apostle Paul is a great example of someone who continued throughout his life to gain a greater and greater understanding of God; pursuing the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:7-14) And Peter recognized that we have been called “out of darkness into (the Lord’s) marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) These men were “all in” right up to their executions at the hands of the Roman Emperor. Theirs was a quest not just to serve the God of heaven but to know Him. And that’s a point to be made. All of us need to do both within the sphere that we’re called. Paul had training in the Jewish theology of his day, such that, having encountered the Lord on the road to Damascus, he was later able to discern the implications of what had happened at the cross. That’s why so much of the New Testament was written by him. But it was John—the apostle who had rested in the bosom of Jesus—who was able to discern the essential nature of God. And it’s that nature that we must appreciate. Our understanding of the Lord doesn’t simply reduce to a list of dos and don’ts; it’s derived from an encounter with Him that’s informed by the written Word. The problem is that the written Word is limited in its capacity to communicate because the meaning of words is elastic. Our understanding of a word is derived from a combining of our current understanding of that word and what was intended by the writer. God is love, but what does that mean?

That brings us back to the nature of God. If the Lord is the fundamental reality through whom everything was created, then how do we solve the conundrum that seems to suggest that He’s “responsible” for the creation of what is evil in the world while identifying Him as love? Thinking about this prompts me to again remember that the Lord presents Himself as our Father. An example of this is when Jesus was teaching His disciples how to pray; beginning His prayer with: “our Father who art in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9) But references to the Lord as our Father are also found in David’s prayers a thousand years earlier, and in the prophecies of Isaiah written centuries later. (1 Chronicles 29:10; Isaiah 63:16) “So what?” you may ask. My response is that our God could have revealed Himself as an entity like the “Force” in Star Wars or as a permeating consciousness in which we all share, but He didn’t. Instead He revealed Himself as a Father, the ultimate Father from whom all fathers come. Abraham was the father—the patriarch—of the Israelites; and the man Jesus emerged from his lineage via the line of David, the first King of Israel. However, Jesus was not conceived via Mary’s husband, Joseph. He was conceived as a result of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary. Thus, He was truly the Son of God. The point I’m making is that God has revealed Himself as a Father. He is the Father from whom the Son entered into the world providing a means for reconciliation with Him. But He’s also the Father of all who hear and respond to the “good news” brought to us through Christ the Son!

The point I’m emphasizing is that God, as the ultimate reality, the source of all that exists, is not a force or a consciousness, or a power to be reckoned with, He’s a Father. And He’s our Father. When it comes to our God—the one and only—it’s personal. And the personal nature of our Father God is what? You know what it is if you’ve been walking after Him for any length of time. Our God—our Father—is Love. The problem with the word: love, is that it’s so elastic we have difficulty knowing what it means! We say we love something if we like it a lot—we really love pink, or baseball, or whatever. Or we say we love someone because we really get along well with them, and they’re willing to be intimate with us. But what is love as we apply the term to our Father God? My thought is that our God exists in a state of relationship. Relationship pertains to His very existence as Father, Son, and Spirit: three in one. And relationship pertains to His correspondence with His creation.

How does that apply to the contentions that permeate this world? The nature of God is to exist in relationship, but genuine relationship requires interaction rather that manipulation. God as a Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit exists in sublime correspondence, unimpeded collaboration, and infinite cooperation. But creation, as a product of divine collaboration, includes the opportunity for collaboration with the divine. And genuine collaboration requires a measure of independence for the collaborators, which means that such collaboration has the potential for being disrupted. What I’m trying to say is that the creative action of God gave creation the ability to collaborate with the creator…or not. Otherwise it wouldn’t have the potential for true collaboration, only manipulation, which is inconsistent the nature of God as Love. What this means is that the nature of God requires the opportunity for dissension within the creation. Which is what we have big time! The devil could have chosen to follow after his creator or go his own way, and Adam and Eve had the same choice. They weren’t created in a flawed form; they were created as beings that could choose to collaborate or rebel. The results of their rebellion set in motion a process for reconciliation on the one hand, and ultimate destruction on the other.

If this sounds crazy so be it. This is what highfalutin—dare I say it—“theologians” do. But I don’t think it’s outside the purview of any serious Christian to ask serious questions: Who is God? And why are things the way they are? It isn’t that we have to understand all this in order to be saved. And the fact that such questions probably can’t be answered precisely shouldn’t prevent us from wondering prayerfully about the Lord and His actions. What we don’t want to do is let such musings obscure what we do know, prompting us to deviate from the “fundamental” truths that inform our faith: The Trinity of God’s being; Jesus as the Son of God in the flesh of man; reconciliation through the cross; the indwelling Holy Spirit abiding in those who repent and believe; the written Word inspired by the living God. These are things that we must embrace and retain as we wonder about the Lord and contemplate His creation. It’s a challenge, a wonderful challenge to know our Father, and to wonder at His existence.