What’s love got to do with it?

BY BARNABY DEVITT

Tina Turner sang:
Oh, what's love got to do, got to do with it
What's love but a second hand emotion
What's love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken

Is it true, as Bobbie Dylan says, that "love makes the world go 'round"? Or, do we live in an indifferent universe, on a planet created by a cosmic force that has no interest in us?

The philosophical puzzle used to be: If God is all-powerful, then He would stop the suffering in the world. Since He doesn't stop it, then He must be indifferent to it.
The answer generally given to this argument is that we don't yet understand His plan.

Of course, the answer is irrefutable. Since we can't know the nature of the moment before time, we can't possibly know the mind of God, and we can't possibly know His plan. But the argument is tautological. We have defined God as the answer to our questions about the meaning of God, so God is God,
and there's nothing more to say about it.

Kierkegaard had an answer to this dilemma. He suggested a leap of faith, what he called philosophical suicide. That is, you give up trying to reason your way to an understanding of the divine and simply accept it. In this sense, then, faith is a gift. In the words of the old Shaker hymn:

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

What a prize! For those lucky enough to commit philosophical suicide, they will find themselves in the valley of love and delight. For the rest, there is the anguish of the unknown and the unknowable.

The Christian faith is based on accepting this simple gift. Perhaps no one defined early Christianity more than the Apostle Paul. His Epistle to the Ephesians, written during his captivity in Rome, contains important theological dogma that was to shape the future of the Christian religion. His faith in God's plan leads him ultimately to believe in predestination: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. 5 He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 which he lavished upon us. 9 For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

How wonderful! A faith transcendent. There is no room for doubt. All the horrors and suffering in the world fade away in the belief that they are part of God's plan that will in "the fullness of time" be revealed to us.

What a comfort, especially if you're not one of the suffering. How reassuring to believe there's nothing that can or should be done to relieve the suffering in the world because it's all a part of God's plan. And what a relief to Paul's Roman captors. Now there would be no reason for those troublesome Christians to resist Roman rule.

And, it's meant as a balm to the suffering as well, to believe the pain of this world is part of God's plan to prepare you for a heavenly kingdom. It's sold to oppressed peoples as a kind of bargain: the more you suffer in this world, the greater your reward in the next.

Marx believed religion was the opiate of the people.
Opium is a dangerous and addictive drug, but a great comfort to ease pain and suffering. On Memorial Day, veterans sell plastic replicas of an opium poppy to remind people of the suffering of soldiers during World War I when the only comfort the wounded had was opium to relieve their pain. It would be senselessly cruel to deprive wounded soldiers of opium, but Marxists are concerned about the cause of the suffering. When the patient is ill, it is necessary to treat the immediate symptoms: reduce fever, stop the bleeding, get oxygen into the lungs, etc. But the point is not just to treat the symptoms. The point is to cure the disease. What caused this

disease? We need to find the cause so we can eliminate it, like we've eliminated Yellow Fever, Polio, and the Black Plague. Sometimes the cause is as small as a mosquito or a flea on a rat. Sometimes, in the case of perpetual war in America, the cause can be as great as a military-industrial-complex that rules Congress and the Presidency and brands anyone who dissents as a coward and a terrorist.
But if there is no comfort in knowing God's plan, then are we "lost in the stars" as Kurt Weill wrote?

And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away
Forgetting the promise that we've heard him say
And we're lost out here in the stars
If there is the hand of love guiding the universe, then it is beyond our comprehension, and, therefore, not love at all as we know it. What hope do we have?

Our only hope is to be truly alive, and we are only truly alive when we are loving someone else. Love makes us believe in something bigger than ourselves. Love gives us a glimpse of the eternal. Is this what is meant by the God of love? Not that we are the passive recipients of divine providence, but rather by actively engaging ourselves in the world we are creating and magnifying the love of God. The spark of the divine that is in all of us needs communion with other eager souls to burst into a flaming bonfire. Go in peace, but most of all, go in love.