Welcome to the Soil & Roots podcast, digging beneath the system to uncover the hidden ideas that form us, the church, and the culture.
I’m Brian Fisher. This is Episode 116, “What Is Love? (Baby, Don’t Hurt Me).”
Over the first five seasons, we have consistently attempted to reiterate a point about the purpose of discipleship that is repeatedly made in the Bible and by many modern scholars.
The goal of discipleship is not simply to be converted, reach heaven, or accumulate more biblical knowledge. It is to become more like Jesus. The discipleship journey is one of character formation, or what we also refer to as heart formation or spiritual formation. This journey is holistic—it involves the entire human person, not just the mind. Ultimately, we intend to become so tied to Jesus that we think, act, relate, and love like Him without even having to think about it.
Because the word “discipleship” has so many strings attached to it today, we often refer to this process of holistic spiritual formation as deep discipleship. This is how we become more awake or attuned to the heart of God and our own hearts. We apprentice with Jesus to learn from him and become more like him.
And we’ve spent five seasons exploring this base question: how does one person become more like another person, from the inside out? What does that process look like? How is it best accomplished?
We are now turning our attention to the object of our formation. We’ve identified the problems, explored what the process of spiritual formation entails, and are now exploring the person we are attempting to become more like.
What does it truly mean to be more like Jesus?
So here in Season 6, that’s the very big bite that we’ve taken, and we’re taking our time to chew on it. We’re exploring what it means to think, act, love, and relate like Jesus.
We’ve explored discipleship as the ongoing transformation of our ideas and desires, two powerful forces that sit at the bedrock of our hearts and make up part of our “operating system.” We don’t normally think about our ideas and desires, but they power and govern us anyway.
As we’ve discussed before, deep discipleship means gradually transforming our dark ideas into ideas of light, ideas of the Kingdom. These are ideas of love and goodness.
But before we can explore ideas of love and goodness, we need to wrap our heads around what those terms—“love” and “goodness”—even mean in this context. And it’s more of a tricky wicket than you might imagine.
Let’s dive in.
Not So Easy
There’s a well-known thought experiment in ethics called “The Trolley Dilemma.” There are many variations, but here is one: a runaway trolley is careening uncontrollably down the tracks. Ahead, the track splits into two. If we do nothing, the trolley will continue on a track with five people, killing them. If we pull a lever, the trolley will switch to a different track with only one person, but we must intentionally pull the lever, which will result in that person’s death. Do we pull the lever?
In another version, the runaway trolley will hit a senior citizen unless we pull the lever, and then we’ll hit a toddler. Which do we save, and why?
Both of these questions avoid the obvious answer, which is to fire whoever is responsible for this city’s horrible trolley system.
In these thought experiments, we are meant to wrestle with the principles of right and wrong, which leads to an exploration of ethics and morals.
A website for Oxford College notes that ethics concerns rules of conduct in a particular culture or group that are recognized by an external source or social system. For instance, a medical code of ethics that physicians should abide by.
Morals, by contrast, are principles based on an individual’s own ideas of right and wrong—that is, a person’s internal moral compass.
Whether concerning ethics or morals, our principles of right and wrong guide us in determining what is “good” and what is “bad,” on a societal or individual level.
So, “goodness” might seem like a fairly simple concept, but it’s actually somewhat elusive.
These days, in our polarized society, you can pick almost any major issue and rapidly find stark and vehement disagreement on what is “good.” Immigration, education, abortion, economics, vaccines, war, gender and sexuality, voting policies… the moment one person proclaims something “good,” someone else will claim the opposite—that it’s actually bad, unjust, or unfair.
Our society can’t even agree on whether a television show is “good”, much less the rules to govern our lives.
Is staying up later good? Is an extra serving of ice cream good? Is getting a tattoo good? Is doing homework good? Is your spouse quitting a well-paying job to seek a more fulfilling one good? Is moving across the country for a fresh start good?
Sam the Sham
Back in 1967, the band Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs released a vinyl single called “Oh That’s Good, No That’s Bad.” Every time the singer relates something that seems like it would be good, it turns out to be bad, and every time it seems bad, it turns out good.
Sam the Sham sings:
Not long ago I was walkin’ down the street
When a woman in a car knocked me off my feet
(Oh, that’s bad)
No, that’s good
My insurance paid me a lot of dough
More money than I’d seen in a year’s payroll
(Oh, that’s good)
No, that’s bad
On doctor bills is where my money went
And all I had left was a very bad limp
(Oh, that’s bad)
No, that’s good
‘Cause the way I walked got me a role
As the marshall’s partner on a TV show
And so on. Eventually, the singer falls in love with a nurse…
(Oh, that’s good)
No, that’s bad
‘Cause I found out she was the doctor’s wife
Now, I’ll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life
‘Cause no matter how I pleaded and begged
He operated on my good leg
The point is that we often think we know what’s good and what’s bad when we really don’t.
More recently, a similar idea was spotlighted in an episode of the award-winning, brilliant kids’ television series Bluey called “The Sign.” Full disclosure: I’ve never watched the show, but Dr. Tim tells me it’s amazing.
In the episode, young Bluey is sad because she’s moving away from her home, so her teacher reads a story called “The Farmer.” In this story, a series of events happen, and each time, the neighbors tell the farmer that it’s “good luck” or “bad luck,” but every time the farmer just replies, “We’ll see.”
In the episode, what seems good—finding a lucky coin—turns out bad when it gets lost. Later, in a twist of fate, that lost coin leads to Bluey staying in her beloved family home—something very good.
Getting a Handle on Goodness
Here’s where all of this is heading.
It can be difficult to reach a consensus among humans about what is good. On an individual level, our ideas of goodness may change throughout our lives. We often find we’re mistaken in our view of what is good or bad.
So, what are we supposed to do with the statement “God is good”?
The Bible tells us repeatedly of the goodness of God. Like “God is love,” it’s one of those seemingly simple declarations, an equation like 2 + 2 = 4 that will be correct every single time.
God is good. Period.
And he is.
But, as ol’ William Shakespeare would have it, there’s the rub. Rather than this logical expression defining goodness for us, we use it to define God. We think we know what goodness is, and the Bible tells us that God is good, so whatever we think is good, God must be that.
We might think of traits like compassion, quick forgiveness, long-suffering, patience, generosity, and love. All of these are good, and God is indeed all of these things. However, it becomes harder to see God as good by our definition when we, perhaps, read OT passages about brutality and death directed by this same God.
Defining God by our own moral determinations is a slippery slope, particularly when we’ve already concluded that our moral determinations are divisive, inconclusive, inconsistent, and unclear.
Experiencing Goodness
We would do better to turn it around—to consider the characteristics of God that have been declared throughout God’s first and second books. We can look to Scripture and to Creation to learn all about God. And once we know him, once we have pressed close, we will then have a clear idea of who God is… and so have a clear idea of what is good. The more we know God, the more intimate our relationship with Him, and the more we comprehend and embrace goodness.
Put another way, the ideas of God make up goodness; true goodness is encapsulated in the ideas of God.
The ideas of the Kingdom are truth, light, and love, which lead to human flourishing. However, we do not always understand them, and sometimes, they are baffling.
God is Love
Another seemingly simple idea in the Bible and displayed all over creation is that God is love. We are told that if we love, we have seen God, that God is loving, that those who are in God are full of love, that God poured out his love for us, and that his love is everlasting. God is love.
As before, this would seem to be pretty straightforward. We know what love is, don’t we? So God must be that.
But if there’s a single concept that causes even more confusion than what’s ‘good,’ it’s understanding love. You are likely two steps ahead of me here and realize that all the arguments I made about ethics, morality, and defining goodness at the societal and individual levels apply just as fully to defining love.
What is love? What does it look like? What is a loving way to act?
Hopefully, a married couple, especially one that has been together for decades and has grown together over those years, would share a mutual definition of love that is pretty close to one another. But you can bet that definition varies from one couple to another, from one culture to another, from one society to another.
Love is freedom. Love is commitment. Love is holding on. Love is letting go. Love is what makes me feel good. Love is what makes me happy. Love is what hurts. Love is affection. Love is sacrifice. Love is receiving. Love is giving. Love is physical. Love is emotional. Love is an act of the heart. Love is an act of the will.
There is a newspaper cartoon strip launched in 1970 by a New Zealand cartoonist called “Love Is…” that still, 55 years later, appears six days per week with a new cartoon that gives a fresh example of what love is. Its most famous strip, “Love Is… being able to say you are sorry,” was marketed internationally, and the strip earned its creator $5 to $6 million annually in the ’70s. After over 17,000 different strips, its cartoonist is still finding new ways to say what love is.
A man who just got served divorce papers could say that love is a hoax. A woman holding her newborn would say that love is pure. A little boy might say that love is gross. A spouse who just buried their beloved may say that love is pain. Advertisements tell us that love can be bought, sold, and traded.
What, then, are we supposed to do with that statement, “God is love”?
As before, rather than using it as a means to define God, we would do better to consider how God has revealed his character to us and use this to better understand love.
And we’re going to have to wrestle with these ideas of love and goodness because Jesus did not always act in ways that jive with our understandings of either. Yet he is the very living embodiment of the ideas of the Kingdom; Jesus personifies love, and he personifies goodness. So, we need a working definition to help us move forward.
So here’s the definition we will use for the rest of this season:
Love is seeking someone’s goodness based on God’s ideas.
Whose Idea Was This?
And now, we see how important it is for our ideas to align with God’s ideas, particularly when it comes to ideas of love and goodness.
We may think they do, and we may be very certain in our beliefs, but our actions might reveal something different.
A man might believe intellectually that God is the great provider who will never let his children go begging for bread, but then when the man is laid off from his job, he panics and despairs. The ideas in his soil, in his heart, don’t yet match with God’s ideas. A woman may readily acknowledge that she is fearfully and wonderfully made, a creation of beauty, but still tear herself down mentally when she looks in a mirror and compares herself to pictures on social media. The ideas in her soil, in her heart, don’t yet match with God’s ideas.
Uncovering our genuine ideas about God and His character does not happen casually or haphazardly. It requires intentional action – our participation.
Back in Season 1, I gave you a quote from A.W. Tozer, and I’ll give it to you again with a larger excerpt because it’s vital for our exploration of Jesus here in Season 6.
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.[…]
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.[…]
Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.[…]
That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Our creedal statements have little consequence compared to our actual thoughts about Him. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions. It may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.
Our ideas may seem like very good ideas, but all we have to do is look around to see that not all of humanity’s ideas lead to human flourishing. It’s pretty clear that a large percentage of them lead to the opposite. Sadly, this applies within the church. I hear routinely from people following Jesus who are, right now, experiencing substantial church hurt. They are experiencing the opposite of what it means to seek each other’s goodness in the very place that should be modeled.
We might confront the very real possibility that our ideas of goodness might actually be ideas of darkness. Our ideas may be well-intentioned, but they may be corrupted by lies, temptations, ignorance, prejudice, seductions, and even parts of our stories.
If, for example, our hearts hold to the idea that God is a distant, authoritarian figure, we live in darkness, even as we sit in church—or perhaps because we sit in church.
It’s vital that we ask God to help us experience His ideas of goodness and ask Jesus and some friends to help transform our hearts in that direction.
Goodness and the Four Relationships
We’ve talked many times about how God placed us in four relationships back in the Garden: with him, with ourselves, with others, and with creation and culture.
What does it mean to seek goodness in each of these relationships?
With God
First, what does it mean to seek goodness in our relationship with God?
Seeking God’s goodness might mean asking Him what pleases Him and what breaks His heart.
What about us and who we are becoming delights him? What saddens him?
In the Bible, God shows how much he values raw, earnest, heartfelt genuineness. David was called a man after God’s own heart, and he made some huge mistakes. But repeatedly, he was transparent and vulnerable with his Creator. His heart was an open book toward his God. And the Lord responded.
We are authentic and open we are happy and thankful, but it’s also true when we are angry. When we are despairing and broken. In those times, being authentic before God might mean shouting at him, lamenting, or just calling out in our brokenness. It might mean telling God exactly what we are thinking even when what we are thinking is not very nice or pleasant. We might feel wrong or guilty about coming to God in that fashion, but it’s still drawing near to him, being real with him, like children with their parents.
A healthy relationship is not without conflict. It is honest and trusts that love is strong enough to endure big questions and big emotions.
So, we wrestle with God.
This overlaps with another relationship, the one God placed us in with ourselves. What does it mean to seek our own goodness?
With Self
Sometimes, this involves recognizing that just because something is good for us does not mean it will be pleasing to us. God’s goodness may be uncomfortable, difficult, or even downright painful.
C.S. Lewis grappled with this following the death of his wife. His account of this struggle, titled A Grief Observed, is so raw and vulnerable, so real, that the publisher wanted him to publish it under a pseudonym. They didn’t want the public to know that this world-renowned apologist, this titan of the faith, was struggling so mightily with his relationship with God. The publisher might have been threatened by it, but God certainly wasn’t.
Lewis writes:
The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed–might grow tired of his vile sport–might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.
Either way, we’re for it.
What do people mean when they say ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?
Seeking our goodness in the context of God’s ideas does not mean our pleasure, comfort, or happiness. It may not lead to physical health or financial security. It may cost us friendships, family members, dreams, and goals. It may, in fact, be intensely painful. That doesn’t mean it’s not good.
With Others
What about the third of our four relationships, our relationship with others? What does it mean to seek someone else’s goodness?
We often default to thinking that being ‘good’ to someone means engaging with them, drawing near, and loving on them. And many times, it does. It may mean loving someone even when it’s hard, giving sacrificially, extending compassion even when it’s not returned, or serving another, whoever they are. We are told to love even our enemies.
But sometimes, seeking someone’s goodness means not being in a relationship with that person.
Lysa TerKeurst, a modern American speaker Christian author, and the president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, explores the intersection of therapy and theology. She writes:
“…we can’t enable bad behavior in ourselves and others and call it love. We can’t tolerate destructive patterns and call it love. And we can’t pride ourselves on being loyal and longsuffering in our relationships when it’s really perpetuating violations of what God says love is.”
TerKeurst continues:
“God calls us to obey Him. God does not call us to obey every wish and whim of other people. God calls us to love other people. God does not call us to demand that they love us back and meet every need we have.”
TerKeurst would make the case that it’s difficult to love someone else without loving yourself first, and there’s a difference between seeking someone’s goodness and self-abuse. Sometimes, seeking someone’s goodness means establishing boundaries or even stopping being in a relationship with them.
We quote the Bible verse that if someone takes your shirt, give him your coat too, or if they force you to go one mile, go with them two. But that principle is taken out of context if applied universally. It can lead to self-abasement and endless submission, which can get dangerous, particularly when others do not have your goodness at heart.
In spiritually abusive situations, the demands for submission are really a means of control.
We must have healthy boundaries. We must hold to God’s ideas of goodness, which include honoring his idea of love—in each of our relationships, including how we treat ourselves.
With Creation and Culture
What about seeking goodness in our relationship with creation and culture?
We’ll have more to say about this over the course of this season, but at its core, this means applying God’s ideas about what he has made and implementing them appropriately through our role as stewards of creation and as the salt and light of our cultures.
Too many times over the years, divisions have sprung up to separate different camps that ought not to be split—or should find a healthy balance. We have one group focusing on social justice, while another sees that as secondary to the mission of evangelism. We have environmentalism paired up with the political left and Christian conservatives distancing themselves from caring for the earth.
As stewards and rulers of creation, I think Jesus’ followers should be the first to step up and embrace environmental causes. They should be leading the way in caring for nature and animals. This may include protecting endangered species, making sure we protect the elements from harmful pollutants, and wise use of raw materials.
Then we have some fighting for prayer in the schools and the Ten Commandments on the walls, and others pulling back fully from the public sphere—separating not just church and state, but church and culture. How might God be inviting us to care for culture? How might He be inviting us to join with Him to redeem and restore it in His Kingdom?
We should avoid formulaic or simplistic understandings of how Jesus loved and let his example and the Holy Spirit guide us. This includes our relationship with creation and culture.
C.S. Lewis writes, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
Onward
Seeking goodness in all four of our relationships. It’s a wonderful, vibrant topic to explore, and we are just getting started.
As our hearts come to rest in the reality of this love, and as our hearts are gradually molded by God’s ideas, it brings an abundant life of truth, joy, contentment, and peace. And whether you’re Sam the Sham or Bluey the cartoon dog, I hope you’ll agree with me when I say, “Oh, that’s good.”
