God’s Particular Love

I am increasingly unhappy with all the talk of how God loves everybody. He does love everybody, let’s be clear about that. But we make it sound like he’s some sort of do-gooder who loves the undifferentiated human mass.

The reality is that He loves each particular–you–in a particular way. He loves you the way only you can be loved, to the maximum extent and beyond that you specifically can be loved. You should not come to God’s love via syllogism–“God loves mankind. I am a man. Therefore….” Too many of us are trying to lawyer God–“you have to love me because its a rule!”

It should be the other way around. You should come to understand and know his love for others by swimming in the current of his love for you. Or you should come to know his love for you by learning from people you know the depths and emotion of his love for them. Out with abstractions.

The glory of an infinite God is the vast particularity he brings to each particular.