Problem of Evil & Agape-Justice Part 5: Freedom Violated and the Disastrous Rise of Self-love

God’s goodness and omnipotence is shaped in accordance with agape-love that He is. Accordingly, the potential for suffering and evil comes about given how He intentionally set the door of opportunity (existential crossroads) before those creatures He created in His image: humanity and angels. The greatest gift He could give us was this likeness to the Divine I AM by possessing existential autonomy.[i] However, unlike our Creator, we human being do not inherently exist according to the agape-nature. Even still, Yahweh created us to be able to partake in the divine-life of agape, so that we could become freely self-emptying in likeness to Himself. For this possibility to exist for us, He had to create us with the capacity for the existential crossroads between self-love and self-denial. If we embrace the former, it leads us into becoming a self shaped according to anti-agape, whereas the latter leads to becoming partakers in the divine-life of agape. Becoming agape-shaped selves grants us an eternal destiny of becoming loving ones in likeness to the Divine. We then truly become co-working neighbors with Yahweh’s immanent omnipresence in the created world.

With these truths stated, let us now turn to the issue of how “God [only] accomplishes the good,” whereas He “permits the evil” (251). This happens given that our Creator allows His originally-intended plan for us becoming His ontological neighbors in agape-love to be rejected by us. This heavenly gift of free agency originates from the possibility of truly being self-emptying like the Divine, yet if rejected, the possibility of self-love becomes actualized when we cease to partake in the divine nature (251).[ii] The problem of evil comes about given that human beings, as well as one third of the heavenly creatures, choose self-love over becoming a self-emptying self. This choice unfolds either by acts of commission or omission. For example, we choose to will to be a self that is a self-loving person. Alternatively, we have chosen life as a self that willfully remains in self-love by not willing to be an agape-shaped self who by partaking in the Divine nature embrace self-denial with their whole being. Only by becoming godlike self-emptying persons do we exist as beings free of the slavery of self-love. Yet due to the fall of humanity’s first parents, all of us human beings are born into self-love, as those not partaking in the Divine nature. Our culpability and guilt, however, ultimately lie in our free agency in not willing what it takes to be free of self-love that comes so natural to us, as evidenced by the discipline required to tame the inner bent of egocentricism. Our chief sin lies in stubbornly and hard-heartedly refusing to embrace divine forgiveness and the divine power that alone leads to the spiritual fruit of self-denial. In other words, we resist the divine arm that seeks to enable us to be free from the bondage of a fading life revolving around self-love. Grace comes to enable us to embrace the eternal life of self-emptying agape. This eternal life represents our originally intended destiny. We can only walk this life path by the Spirit’s work of sanctifying and reconciliatory grace. By the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, our Creator personally restores us to our destiny to be immortal partakers of the divine nature of agape. I will now proceed to argue that bad fruit of self-love that plagues our world originally resulted from the bad use of creaturely free will. Ultimately, creatures and not the most-blessed Creator who is agape, is responsible for all the suffering and evil that transpires in our world.

Problem of Evil & Agape-Justice Part 4: The Power & Goodness of the God of Love leads to Human Freedom

In God’s love He sustains all existence, for His love is up-building. He has created this world to be His dwelling place, and so His love is omnipresent within this world (3-4, 301). This means that His power is part of His goodness. His goodness is defined according to His agape, and this means that “goodness [for God] is to give away completely,” therefore, “there is only one who is good – God, who gives all things” (264-265, 405-406). That God gives all things is true, because God, in making this world and humanity His tabernacle, gives all things by giving them Himself, His very own life. He is the Self-Emptying One who freely gives of Himself. Therefore, His power is set to work in promoting this end by promoting His aim to make all people neighbors of agape. This makes sense when considering the context where it says how God will make humanity His temple and part of His family. Here it says that He is all-powerful, given how His power is made manifest by His ability to give us the freedom to be self-giving without imposing Himself by compulsion: love that acts in self-control is the greatest power (2 Cor. 6:14-18).[i]

Now it is true that God uses His power to seek His own glory and honor. Nonetheless, those who cite this biblical truth fail to take seriously the truth regarding Him being love. They fail to recognize that “in seeking His own, which is love, He seeks it by giving all thing… yes He sought his own by giving Himself for all so that they might be like Him in what was His own, in sacrificial giving of Himself” (264-265). Furthermore, God being Good is not a matter of Him necessarily using His omnipotence to ensure that only good things happen to all. In this case, if anything bad would happen (i.e. suffering) to something He has made, then it would mean that He is either all-powerful but not all-good or all-good but not all-powerful. On the contrary, God’s goodness rests in Him giving everything freely, and the highest gift to be given is to give every person the opportunity to be like Him in giving themselves freely. Every moment He gives them the opportunity to receive or reject the gift of His intimate communal presence.[ii]

Problem of Evil & Agape-Justice Part 3: God is Agape-Love

"Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God.  The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him... And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. We love because he loved us first" (1 John 4:7-9, 16-19; NET).

God (Yahweh) is Agape

Now let us turn to the subject of God being agape, since we have come to know what it means to truly God’s neighbors in agape-love.[i] We have just seen how the lives of His neighbors abide in agape, and so it makes sense why God ontologically speaking is agape-love, for those who love like Him are truly like Him as much as a created being can be. Let us turn to a quote by Kierkegaard, “Christianity’s take is humanity’s likeness to God. But God is love, and therefore we can be like God only in loving, just as we also, according to the words of the apostle, can only be God’s coworkers in love” (63)[ii]. According to 1 John chapter 4, God exists as an eternal spring of agape, such that agape-flows naturally flows from His very essence with infinite propulsion from an exhaustible ontological source. This means that in being true to Himself, God cannot help but be self-emptying. After all, manner of existing represents His very to-be, such that He reveals Himself as the ‘I AM, the Self-Emptying One, for that IS what and who I AM’ (187).

Even though water often represents the Spirit in Scripture, so also does fire, and it makes since why God would call Himself a “consuming fire” that is analogous to a baptizing water (Deut. 4:24; Luke 3:16). This is made clear through the narrative of Christ, who is the revelation of the I AM of God. His live is a living testimony that God’s to-be is one in which in being true to Himself, He “spares nothing but in [agape-]love gave everything” (3-4). This leads Kierkegaard to conclude that the “life of love” within God must be “an eternal spring” that infinitely gushes forth love (3-4, 10). In Jeremiah 17:13, we read how God exists as the fountain of life, and Christ revealed how He exists as the source of living water (John 4:10-15). In John 7:37-39, He teaches that this water of divine life represents the Holy Spirit, who is the “life-giving Spirit” (Rom 8:2). Consequently, in order to become the children of God, it makes clear why individuals must be born in water and spirit, for only then can we become neighbors with God in bringing agape-love to completion (John 3:5-6).

The “boundlessness” of the freely self-emptying life of agape rests in it being freely offered without “excluding a single one” (52). He offers all His neighbors made in His image to-be partakers of this life of agape. After all, it is the nature of agape to freely give to all regardless of “accidental” dissimilarities of essence, for they bear similarity of being in which they are Infinite Being’s finite other (52). God is the one “who lovingly gives all things” (271). As Scripture teaches, God is like the sun in freely giving light to all, given how “all generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change”  (James 1:17).[iii] This leads Kierkegaard to acknowledge that “love is indeed devotion and sacrifice,” and this devotedness is ingrained in the very nature of God, for He is holy. With this in mind, we should consider the Scriptures that make clear how misunderstood God’s holiness is by those espousing the Christian faith. For instance, in one place God Himself says, “All my tender compassions are aroused! I cannot carry out my fierce anger! I cannot totally destroy Ephraim! Because I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you – I will not come in wrath” (Hos. 11:8-9)![iv] God made clear to the Israelites through the exodus narrative up to Mt. Sinai that He was devoted to promoting their highest good, and this was for them to possess an intimate relationship with Him who is “slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6; Deut. 33:3).

Problem of Evil & Agape-Justice Part 2: Agape-love in the realm of Human Actions

Human Works of Agape-Love

The original intent of God was to be intimate neighbors of humanity in being co-workers of agape-love by way of dwelling in and through His divine nature of agape. Moses is an exemplar of this original intention, as “God spoke to Moses face to face, the way a person speaks to a friend (same word for neighbor),” and also consider Christ’s relationship with His disciples whom He called His friends, as well as the relationship between Christians. (Ex. 33:11; John 15:15)[i].  If one truly abide in agape, then it must be given, and it is meant to be given to all creatures created to be neighbors in agape-love, as the spiritual breath of life meant for all earth-dwellers.[ii] True agape is not at all about comparison, but is only about incessant action. It flows by a continual inward direction that derives love from one’s innermost being where one, in the Spirit, relates intimately with God. He is the only source of agape. Agape-love also flows by an outward direction by which one becomes a temple of agape as the living-water of soul incessantly flowing as a fountain sourced by an eternal spring. There is no time for comparison or else one stops abiding in this eternal spring, which is continuously ready to give (187-188, 280). Hence, Kierkegaard concludes that regarding human beings in relation to agape-love, “love for God and the neighbor is the true [agape-] love,” and this summarizes the entire standard of human oughtness as creatures made to reflect God’s likeness (45; Luke 10:25-28).

Kierkegaard points out that in regards to individual human persons, designating a work as a work of agape-love “depends on how the work is done,” and so like the external manifestations of the thought life, they happen to be based on matters of inwardness and not externalities, which thinks loving persons is merely about benefitting their situation in this world (8, 13, 327-329). So, for us our life that manifests agape-love like a real neighbor of agape comes from our innermost being where our likeness to God is found, in our soul and spirit. As we shall see later, we can only be loving as God is loving by inwardly and intimately relating ourselves to God in a communal God-relationship, so that we love by and through this abiding in He who is agape (8-10, 189). Since “no human being is [agape-]love”, humanity’s agape is not completely self-giving as God’s love (264). God’s self-giving is a love that is “giving of oneself” where oneself is the God who is love, whereas man’s self-giving is “helping the other person to seek God,” in this sense one is giving of oneself by getting out of the way to introduce one to God, even as God is being revealed in and through this person (264-265). In this way a person in self-denial becomes one who sacrificially gives of himself, by doing what the Scriptures calls us to do in laying down our lives for one another, that the other might abide in God’s love. In this way, a loving person acknowledges that God’s love should belong to the other, and so they freely promote the reception of this highest gift, which presupposes that God’s love can be given to them (264-265, 268-269; 1 John 3:16; John 15:12).

Agape-love becomes sacrificial love, because it can and often will be taken advantage of in the world without due recompense. What Kierkegaard speaks of truly takes place: “to give everything away without getting the least in return… [to become a] laughingstock in the eyes of the world… the unconditionally injured one…. being sacrificed”, and Christ Himself informed us it would be this way for us, if we followed in the shoes of the one who was crucified by the very one’s He came to save (269; Luke 6:27-36; Matt. 5:38-48). Such sacrificial love can only be given if it is indeed sacrificial in the sense of one freely, delightfully, and willingly laying down one’s life in giving oneself away. This requires a heart that has become pure, and is pure by being a heart that reflects the heart of God by being bound in His, by beating for what His heart beats for, as a circumcised heart (147-150; Rm. 2:29, 5:5; Deut. 30:6-8; Ezek. 36:26). Because of this sacrificial nature, the manifestation of true agape-love is seen according to the world’s hedonistic self-love to be a wasting of one’s self, and often this love is seen as vain and inconsequential; however, this selfish person is as Kierkegaard says, “unwilling to waste any time or energy on asserting himself, on being something for himself in his self-sacrifice is willing to perish… [rejecting to] simply be an active power in the hands of God” (279). Such a person who does not reject this “forgets his suffering,” because they care more about another’s loss, and forgets so-called advantage to promote another’s true advantage, and so he is truly devoted to the other in being delighted to give of themselves so the other can become an ontological neighbor of agape-love (281).

The Biblical Account of the Justice of Agape-Love: A Theological Treatise on the Problem of Evil and God being Agape-Love (Part 1)

A "Kierkegaardian" Biblical Solution to the Problem of Evil based on God being Agape and His Desire to Create Finite Neighbors of Agape

The Power and Goodness of God Redefined through Lens of God being Agape, The Fall into Self-Love of those Creatures created in the image of the Self-Emptying One, and The 'Tragic' Self-Chosen Suffering of the Self-Emptying One who Knew no Suffering to Potentially Eternally Deliver those who Suffer in this Fallen World

Introduction: The Problem of Evil and Approach to be Taken to Resolving It
In this blog series I will seek to start with Kierkegaard’s portrait of what it means for human beings to be loving ones engaged in works of agape-love to ultimately address the problem of evil (suffering)[i]. The working presupposition for this is the following: God created human persons to be loving ones, because He who is agape-love created us in His very own image (Gen. 1:26; 1 John 4:16).  Given that genuine works of truly loving human persons by necessity bear witness to the very nature of God, a study of genuine works of agape-love within the human sphere will shed light upon what it means for God to be agape-love, once the universal characteristics of agape-love have been determined. From this point of departure of the necessary implications of God being love, the concept of God’s omnipotence and His goodness will be defined in harmony with His nature as an Infinite Being who is agape-love. These concepts will then be applied to the creation, fall, redemption, and final judgment of human persons, in order to address the problem of evil (suffering) from a Kierkegaardian perspective, which he believed could “resolve [this problem] quite simply” (Works of Love, 405).

Ultimately I aim to elucidate this solution to the problem of suffering by turning its focus from the scene of creation and onto the Creator, Himself, as the Self-Emptying One. I aim to elucidate how He freely choose to create a world inhabited by finite loving individuals created in His own image required that the actuality of the potential for departure from His vision of no suffering for finitude, an absolute potentiality ingrained in His very nature, was necessary by virtue of His nature. God knew that if our first parents failed this preliminary examination, they would encounter existential cross-roads accompanied with the potentiality according to His desire for us to be co-workers in agape-love. The possibility of this cross-roads required them to possesses the freedom to choose in self-denial to be this agape shaped self, or to not to be this agape shaped self (by willing to be a self-loving self). Even though God’s desire is that they ultimately will to be an agape shaped self reflecting the glory of His personhood as One who is agape, since He gives them the necessary freedom required to achieve this destiny, this came with the potentiality that this desire of His heart would bring temporal suffering on all His most beloved creation. However, such suffering is against His best intentions for them. Nonetheless, this best of intentions was conjoined with the highest gift He gave them which was the freedom that allowed for this existential crossroads to exist in the first place, to choose agape-love or self-love, which leads to all-consuming hate (anti-agape). As the story goes, by the free decision of His most beloved creation experienced the unknown consequences of following the deceptions that holding on to self-love is in their best interest (Temptation of Adam and Eve that led to a world of suffering). Nonetheless in His loving effort to redeem His creation (to permanently put a stop to anti-agape and the suffering it inflicts), He knew that even when He made a way for reconciliation back to this originally intended purpose by those who via grace freely choose self-denial, the potential remained for this suffering to remain indefinitely for those, who against the desires of His heart of agape, do not repent of self-love.

Did Christ come to Establish a Moral-Police Force or to Win His Wayward Bride Back?

“Jesus said to them [the religious leaders], ‘I tell you the truth, tax collectors and prostitutes will go ahead of you into the kingdom of God!” (Matt 21:31)

I’m struck by how some of “fiery” preachers would scare away prostitutes. They would have terrified and shamed the Samaritan woman, who Jesus met at the well (John 4:4-26).  Unlike Jesus, they would have straight off condemned her for cohabitating with a man and for having had five husbands previously trying to get her to repent out of fear of hell’s fires. They end where Jesus began, such as with the woman caught in adultery, whom Jesus showed intervening love, grace, and mercy before telling her not to sin anymore (John 8:1-11). Strange how Scripture shows us that Jesus approached even the “worst” of sinners radically different than those who say they represent him today mainly by preaching a messages of moral rectitude and condemnation of "sinner". Then they have the audacity to call "sinners" (addressing most of their regular attendees) to repent by quoting from John 3:16: "For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him".

This blog was partly inspired by a video message from Paul Washer that Caleb posted the other day. In the past I have come across many such videos by Paul Washer that inspired me. He points fingers where Jesus did, not the “sinners”, but the false shepherds and false prophets who profess to represent the God of Scripture by their messages of condemnation. They reveal God as mainly a Relentless Judge out for revengeful justice against “sinners”. Jesus didn’t go around condemning “sinners” for being imperfect humans, but He instead recognized how “sinners” like all humanity apart from His redeeming-love are under the dominion of Satan (the Evil One, the Tempter, the Slanderer, the  Deceiver, the Marketing-King of Sin City). Christ showed “sinners” love by first offering to set them free from the Oppressor of their soul (the inflictor of depression, anxiety, fear, regret, sorrow, hopelessness, lovelessness, stress, addiction, etc.). Then He called them to follow Him in setting other “sinners” free from the grip of what controls their soul when they chase after imaginary possible futures that never quench the thirst of their soul for affection, belonging, acceptance, purpose, etc. The real war is not found in “correcting” sinful behavior, but the war lies internally in the heart of a person. Hence, we who profess to follow Christ should carefully take note that: Christ did NOT come to establish a Moral Police Force.

True Religion: Promoting Divine Justice against the Forces of Darkness that make this Fallen World a "Dessert" of Unjust Suffering

"Look how you have fallen from the sky, O shining one, son of the dawn (Lucifer: Satan)! You have been cut down to the ground, O conqueror of the nations! You said to yourself, “I will climb up to the sky. Above the stars of El (God). I will set up my throne...  I will climb up to the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High!... Is this the one who made the world like a desert, who ruined its cities, and refused to free his prisoners so they could return home?” (Isa 14:12-17)

 

So [Jesus] said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Look, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and on the full force of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you." (Luke 10:18-19)

 

 “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27).

A few months ago I went on a fasting/prayer retreat in the desert areas in west Texas, and on the last night I read the entire book of Job. One central issue that stood out to me on this occasion was the issue of innocent suffering and the human situation in a gone-wrong world.

During the trip, I was struck by the small towns in the desert, mostly impoverished, and the visual impress of evil that was conveyed amidst desolation. More so I was struck when camping near the border of Mexico. There was a town just over the border (80 miles away from nearest Mexican town) that has suffered greatly, economically speaking, in the last decade due to the increase border security since 9/11 that greatly hindered trade, even though the local officials told us they rarely had any drug problems with this particular town. On a side note, the National Park where we were staying wanted to help bring this town electricity but environmental activists fought against it because it would hurt wildlife. Additionally, I found it striking that a cloud or animal can pass over the boarder freely and a human being cannot. Anyways, I was struck by the irony of having grown up in America and having a good education and opportunities, yet I 'could' have been born in that town. In such a case my story would be very different. Moreover, how could I tell a person my age who lived in such a town that they could not be successful or used by God because they didn't have the "western credentials" that I grew up believing were necessary to be "somebody" in this world. At this moment I became struck with how many from among the human race have been born into a desert, whether literally or metaphorically speaking, e.g. a kid living in a mansion whose parents ignore him and simply try to buy his love. Many people are born into an oppressive culture, e.g. enslaved, not able to receive education, bound to a low caste, they became orphans at a young age, or even died due to malnutrition.

When I read the narratives of Scripture, I see a God speaking into and acting in a gone wrong desert-like world full of visible and invisible oppression. Babylon and Assyria were used in the prophetic texts to represent such wide-scale oppression. Such horrific oppression has not ceased today whether externally in places like Syria and North Korea, or internally due to ideologies in many Islamic countries, and even the oppression of a consumeristic culture, e.g. sex industry, addictions, and physical disorders like stress/ depression, as well as the negative impact of our culture of leisure and entertainment on the rest of the world that make it affordable for us.

God not only acts in the world against such oppression, but He issues decrees and sends forth His Spirit to promote the cause of the Divine justice. He rages against an oppressive force that in the OT becomes symbolized by earthly symbols, e.g. mountain, rivers, countries, etc., or in the NT as revealed to ultimately be satanic oppression by the thief, planter of weeds, god of this evil age, murderer, slanderer, father of lies, deceiver of the world, lion seeking to devour humanity, etc.

In the OT Israel was meant to be a force against these oppressive powers and a civil politic of justice, though not a Western sense of justice. God's justice included mandatory leaving of excess supply in fields for the poor, distributing land among all the tribes and families equally, years of liberation, laws to protect widows, etc. David was the ideal representative of one who, for the most part, sought to bring about justice throughout the land. The essence of true religion of Christianity echoes this OT principle of genuine righteousness, concerning pure and undefiled religion. It calls us to minister to the oppressed in likeness to Christ who went around healing those oppressed by Satan, who mainly oppresses people within their soul, e.g. depression (Acts 10:38). In reading the Old Testament prophets one discovers that one of the main basis for condemning Israel/Judah was for neglecting or even taking advantage of those suffering injustice or economic poverty, e.g. poor, orphans widows.

In our Western world righteousness is focused on the individual, e.g. check list of 'good' conduct, whereas righteousness of Scripture is focused outwardly on promoting God's cause of justice in one's sphere of influence. God judged His people in view of the cries of oppression in their sphere of influence either going unnoticed or partly against His people themselves as part of the problem of their misfortune. I'm reminded on the real consequences of a sex-hyped culture that takes place in the extremely lucrative sex industry full of oppression, misfortune, and suffering, not to forget the suffering of teens suffering psychologically from sexual immorality and addiction being swept into the current of media's facade of happiness and freedom. I live in one of the main hubs of sex trafficking in the world, Houston, and I have firsthand seen the very real face of suffering and oppression on the streets and in brothels. I have close friends who work as light in these pits of darkness. I have seen hundreds of cars circling clubs along a few blocks into early hours of Saturday morning picking up prostitutes without a cop in sight, while my brothers and sisters in Christ reached out into the darkness to grab those in the fires (Jude 1:23).