The gap between what I was trying to say, however clumsily, is farther away from what you are saying than I expected. You say that “God gave us Life … that is the extent of His love for us.” This is totally unlike the Christian/Catholic understanding (and certainly my understanding) of the relationship between God and man. And what happened to the marriage relationship that God uses throughout the scriptures of the Tanakh/Old Testament? I have a great deal of thinking and reading to do to reply to what you have said here about love, both God’s love and man’s love. This cannot be the end of our conversation on love.
Even what I said there, “that is the extent of His love for us,” could be misconstrued if you do not somehow grasp that we are speaking of God from a human perspective. The marriage relationship was the enlightenment the prophets had to encourage their People to stay on their God and the Laws Moses, enlightened by God, had given to them.
Still, we can read clearly that prophets were still struggling with this analogy since it is only natural for humans to want to relate their human experiences to God (which, shows lack of understanding in the People). We can see this struggle in Isaiah 50 where Isaiah has to clarify that the People, by Reason of cause and effect, are the ones separating themselves from the awareness of God and that God never changed (meaning, God did not divorce them … only ever it was poetic language to teach understanding). It is the OUR ignorance of God’s way that “separates” us from God in our minds … so long as one has the Law of God and observes it TO DO IT, then they will always be able to be restored back to God.
Jeremiah went one step further in the attempt to help the People understand by telling them to not think of God as a husband (which could be too fickle considering the conflicts that can arise between a man and his wife), but rather as a Father. The chastisement of God is again, the Law of cause and effect. The purpose for this shift of perspective was to avoid having the People give up in frustration. If they were being “chastised” … there is Reason (a lesson) to be found and learned … and when the Reason is found, just like we, as parents, don’t hold grudges for lessons learned by our children … God does not either (and in fact, never does have a grudge in the first place).
But to get REAL technical about it … the truth is this. God is not like a man that we could ever adequately compare Him to us because every which way it is tried, there is someone there to corrupt it and thus, turning God into the image of man who is defined by what defines us. We can see even further understanding of this struggle for the prophets in Hosea 11.
The Love of God is not comparable to what we know as love because we are finite and not infinite in knowledge (we exist in our circumstances, in our situation, in our surroundings) … but because we are human, then God enlightens His People of His way through what we know.
Hosea 11:3-4a I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love …
**BUT THEN WE MUST REMEMBER: **
**Hosea 11:9
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: **
(and then, the following which was a specific attempt to keep the People from believing that God could be a man … ) and I will not enter into the city.
God is unchanging … Malachi 3:6. To understand though His Law, cause and effect, the prophets attempted to teach understanding to their People about God’s Law by what humans know via THEIR nature. Then, the struggle was on to keep the People from mistaking their “poetic language” as a literal definition of God, which is when idolatry happens.
Again, Jeremiah in frustration realized that this understanding was esoteric and those who would know will know and understand … thus, on the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 is on a personal level of awareness and instead of it changing anything, the reality of it is the new covenant is just the natural progression to what happens when a person observes without excuse or covering and in spite of fear or guilt or shame, the Laws given to the Jewish People. Eventually understanding of the Laws given to them comes as well as understanding of the place of the People (for one who has gone through this transition, it then becomes clear that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the Church to be the replacement of Israel, the People) … and of course, the right path is natural by then to be in a constant state of learning about the way of God (which is the only knowledge we are able to ever have of God).
So, as you see, when we are discussing “love” … we are discussing what we know of love and can’t by any means apply what we know (or think we know) of love to be an attribute of God. Then, we start defining Him … and ultimately end up in the grips of idolatry.
I would hate for you, of all the ppl who have posted in this thread, to think I was offended by your willingness to share your thoughts. I was not at all, only I was sharing the way I have come to understand it.