Reckless Love

Many, if not all, of us are aware of someone who is involved in a relationship where we frankly don’t understand the motivation of one of the parties toward the other. There is the devoted party that we all can sympathize with that seems to display an extraordinary patience and commitment to the other, meanwhile the other seems intent on abusing that love and compassion. We sit in amazement at how the lover can be so tolerant and offer opportunity after opportunity toward the other. We talk with other friends and maybe even plan an 'intervention' where we intend to confront our naive friend regarding the recalcitrant object of their affection. However, no matter what we do, we cannot convince the person of their naivety and persuade them to move on and devote their love to a more deserving subject.

This leads us to a discussion of what “love” is, and what is the motivation for love? Scripture gives us many attributes of love: patience, kindness, protection, trusting, hoping, and persevering are all enumerated in 1 Corinthians 13. All of these are excellent attributes and some may appear to bolster the side of our forlorn lover from above. Surely they are demonstrating perseverance and hope in offering opportunities to their wayward interest. However, I offer that the attributes of love, much like the attributes of God, do little to clearly define what we are talking about. They don’t do justice to providing a definition because they are more a result of what we are describing than what it is that is being described. The river does not describe the clear mountain streams from which it proceeds, even though it seems to be a greater object collectively than the individual streams.

Instead of the attributes that proceed from love, can we perceive that there are attributes or qualities that proceed into love? Perhaps one such quality is vulnerability or maybe risk. Why vulnerability? If vulnerability is a willingness to at least in some small manner relax our personal defenses and protections toward another, then perhaps can it be offered as an inherent quality of love? If I am willing to love, then I am making some kind of tacit commitment that could allow another person to accept or reject that love. It seems that within that relaxation I am taking a small measure of the risk of rejection.

As each of us has at least some familiarity with that person who has made themselves vulnerable to another and has been taken advantage of in that situation, we can contemplate from within that context what reckless love is. Reckless as defined by Merriam-Webster is marked by lack of proper caution : careless of consequences. There might be many reasons why a person would be willing to forgo customary caution and accept the vulnerability of recklessly loving someone.

It is within this context that we perhaps get our first insight into the recklessness of God's love. God expresses a love to His creation in a manner that is clearly beyond a reasonable calling. We see throughout the Old Testament time and again where God provides for the needs of Israel and is yet rejected after each turn. Then, when the plight of Israel seems so dark, God provides for the needs of Israel through miraculous circumstances to again meet their most basic needs such as the provision for manna or in providing streams of water from the Rock at Horeb while they wondered in the desert.

I believe that the actions of God in the Old Testament are completely consistent with the love of a parent for a lost child. This concept of God as a Father is introduced by Jesus as a young boy in the temple. When separated from Mary and Joseph on a trip to Jerusalem, Jesus upon being reunited with his parents responds to the question of where he was by replying in Luke 2, “about my father’s business.” This view as Father becomes central to understanding the Old Testament actions of God within the context of the New Testament  — that of a Father to a child. This view provides us with some sense of understanding toward the reckless love of the Father.

We may have sympathy for the parent that continues to extend love to the child in spite of their rejection. The parental bond is strong and will so often survive the most egregious of circumstances intact and does not make us question as much as elicit our sympathy. Thus from the perspective of the Father, we can comprehend why God relentlessly pursues man to restore the relationship, how many of us have done or would do the same to restore a relationship with our own progeny?

If we only view God as the Father, we don’t seem to have a complete view of the fullness of God. The theology of the trinity exists not to make sense of the statements of Christ in the New Testament, but, because the truth that was revealed to the apostles and early Christians formed the basis from which we speak of a doctrine of the trinity. To come to a more complete realization of the nature of God’s relationship to man, we may need to look beyond the Old Testament and “Father” toward the images presented within the context of the new covenant.

One of the most common illustrations found in the New Testament is that of the bridegroom and the bride. With Jesus being placed in analogies as the bridegroom, we have to come to grip with the analogy from within the context of the Jewish society that Jesus born into. While I don’t intend to provide a in-depth discussion of the Jewish marriage customs common in the first century, I think it is an area that one would really benefit greatly from studying, especially in regards to the covenant, betrothal, and consummation of marriage. What is very important and needs to be considered is that the marriage covenant of Jesus illustrations differs in the manner in which we encounter and experience the love of God. This context of the bride/bridegroom revives the reckless or reckless manner of God’s love. It is wholly appropriate to view the love of the Father as parental in context. That does not seem to be so appropriate in regards to the love of Jesus which seems to suggest a deeper, more physically intimate relationship of love than from within a parental context.

It is within the love of God from the context presented by Jesus that we arrive at the the truly reckless aspects of the love of God. I think the best picture of that love is actually found within the Old Testament book of Hosea. Most of us are familiar with the story of Hosea and his marriage to the harlot Gomer. Hosea is believed to be the first prophet of the bible to use marriage as a metaphor for the relationship of God to his people, and it is difficult to imagine a worse picture of a “healthy” relationship. Gomer is relentlessly adulterous — so much like Israel of the old testament and even many today who would take the name of our bridegroom Jesus as Christians–”those of Christ”–yet hesitate to remain faithful to that name.

Within this context we confront the love of God that is reckless. This love that would test many of us in observing a friend that would devote such love to the pursuit of another. This love, perfect not in its acceptance but in its offering. Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler was a 20th-century Jewish rabbi who developed the theme that the philosophy of Jewish love is “giving without expectation to take.” I don’t think any picture paints the recklessness of God’s love more beautifully than that. Love that is offered not in any expectation of a return, but only from within the expectation of loving more, of giving more, of devoting self so much more to perfecting the offering of that very love.

Within this context, God never pauses to count the cost. He never pauses to question whether the payment has exceeded the ability of the purchased to fulfill the motivation for the purchase. This can only be accomplished when the lover is assured of the intrinsic value of the object of their love. God is capable of surveying His position and recklessly pouring himself more fully into His loving devotion rather than withdrawing to reconsider His alternatives. In fact, God never presents that there could be an alternative. From His first disappointment in the Garden of Eden, He seems bent to the task of restoring the relationship at all costs, even at the cost of offering himself up as a sacrifice. This is reckless love! This is love that is brazen in its pursuit of acceptance. This is love that cries out across the expanse of an eternal heart for satisfaction.