A. J. MATTILL, Jr.
1. A Towering Text. Only twice does the Bible explicitly say that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Yet commentators declare that “God is love” is “one of the greatest statements in the Bible.” God is love is the author’s “outstanding contribution to Christian theology.” God is love is probably the greatest single statement about God in the whole Bible.” “These three words, God is love, take us to the highest summits in Scripture.” “Johannine thought is the highest conception of the divine nature man can hold. All God’s activity is loving activity. If he creates, he creates in love; if he rules, he rules in love; if he judges, he judges in love.”
2. A Vicious Verse. “God is love” is a vicious verse, for it enables careful readers to destroy mercilessly people’s faith by proving again and again that God is not love. Here we consider a few of the many brutal blows.
A. God was not love when he constructed a system of nature bloody-red in tooth, fang, and claw which wounds sensitive flesh.
B. God was not love when he created monsters with pointed horns and saber teeth and agonizing stings to torture other creatures.
C. God was not love when he created flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and ticks to make life miserable for animals and humans.
D. God was not love when he designed an animal world in which cannibalism (the eating of one’s own kind) is commonplace, involving 140 different species.
E. God was not love when he created the king of terrifying dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurus rex) one of the greatest engines for destruction the world has ever seen, which could rip to shreds any creature crossing its path.
F. God was not love when he heartlessly drowned all but a boatload of people (Genesis 7:9-13, 17-24). The horrors of this world-wide flood are magnified to the nth degree if those fundamentalists are correct who teach that “God once drowned and sent to hell every person alive on earth excepting eight persons who found grace in his sight.”
G. God was not love when he commanded Abraham and his descendants to circumcise every baby when he is eight days old—a painfully cruel and senseless procedure (Genesis 17:10-14).
H. God was not love when he inaugurated and supported the barbaric sacrifice of zillions of animals to gain his favor, culminating in the sacrifice of Jesus (Genesis 8:20; Leviticus; John 1:29; Hebrews 9:22; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 13:8). A God who supports butcher-shop religion/packinghouse piety/slaughterhouse spirituality cannot be love.
I. God was not love when he commanded the Israelites to kill 21,000,000 people to conquer Canaan (Exodus 12:37; Deuteronomy 7:1-6).
J. God was not love when he smote all the firstborn in Egypt (Exodus 12:29).
K. God was not love when he said that he hates women who wear men’s clothing and men who wear women’s clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5).
L. God was not love when he commanded that a guilty man sentenced to be beaten must lie face downward and be whipped up to forty lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).
M. God was not love when he inspired Samson to murder thirty Philistines (Judges 14:19). See Hebrews 11:32, which praises Samson as one of the heroes of faith.
N. God is not love when he or Jesus damns the masses of mankind to unending, unspeakable, torments in hell (Matthew 5:22, 29:30; 13:40-50; 18:8; 25:41, 46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 3:17; 12:5; Revelation 21:8).
Conclusion. In my opinion, the author of 1 John erred when he claimed that “God is love.” For some unknown reason, he overlooked the countless verses in the Bible and the cruelties of nature which show that the God of the Bible is as bad as bad can be.