Does God Love Us Because We are Pathetic?

[[Does God love us because we are pathetic? Would that even be love? I think it might be pity, but it's not love. Someone said they asked God why he loved them and the answer God gave was because they are so pathetic. I can't see that as love, myself. Thanks!]]

Thanks for the question! I tend to agree with you on this, but I think the statement you are reflecting on raises more questions besides. I don't think God regards anyone in this particular way. My sense is that God sees us as we are, of course, and that means he sees us with all of our potentialities, struggles, accomplishments, failures, etc. He knows us intimately, better than we know ourselves, and he does not see us as pathetic but rather as precious. I think that is true whether we have sinned seriously, made terrible mistakes, or whatever. That does not mean that God sugarcoats things, or engages in some sort of denial about us. Rather, he sees the truth of who we are, the entire truth and of course, the deepest truth, and he loves us because we are his own and are made for him. Besides, love is the only thing that can truly call us to become the persons we are made to be.

God, after all, is Love-in-act. That is what and who God is as well as what it means for God to do what God does. I remember once being bothered by this thought because it seemed to me that perhaps God could not do anything BUT love me if he was Love-in-Act. I thought of this as some sort of coercive situation or as though God was limited in some important sense. Eventually, I worked through the theology of it and realized, in part because of the narrative in Genesis where human beings choose to know good and evil, that knowing good and evil does not represent knowing more than only knowing good. The satan in this story suggests that God knows more than these innocents because he "knows" both good and evil, but knowing in the intimate sense the Scripture uses the term makes knowing both good AND evil a reference to knowing less, and knowing less well, less fully and intimately. God ONLY knows the good, in the intimate OT sense of that verb. And God, precisely as God, loves what God knows, just as he knows what he loves. This is not a limitation in God; it is the fullness of Divinity and of authentic Freedom. It is the rest of reality that "knows" (not just knows about) both good and evil that is limited because it is always less than it is meant and created to be; it knows God less well than God wills it to.

I would suggest that whatever this person heard about being pathetic, they were not hearing the voice of God. The voice of their own self-understanding, their own lack of self-esteem, their own woundedness and shame, yes, but not the voice of God.  While I don't think God is blind to evil, I do believe that he does not know it in the way we do. He is aware of the choices we make and the reasons and circumstances driving those choices. Again he knows us far better than we know ourselves. He knows us and that we know evil and he loves us in a way that redeems and frees us. He literally loves us beyond any evil. The notion that God judges us in light of our sin or weakness and limitations is a serious theological mistake I believe. 

The Old Testament shows us God renouncing such a way of judging us or our world when it speaks of God's decision never to destroy the world as occurred in the narrative of the great flood. The OT tells the story of God changing his mind, but as in other stories in the OT this is really a way of revealing a very different God to the hearers of this story. (It is simpler to reveal a God who supposedly changes his mind than it is to develop the theology of a completely different God out of whole cloth; it is simpler for people to accept as well!)  In the New Testament, the central image of God's judgment seems to me to be that of harvest and this develops OT images like that of gleaning in the book of Ruth, for instance. God sees and summons the good, the true, and the holy out of the ambiguity of sinful existence and calls these to abundant life in himself. Moreover, he does so clearly and inevitably. That is the way of Divine judgment, the way of God's love and mercy.  It demonstrates the way God sees us, precious, full of potential and fruitfulness.

It is also a sacramental way of seeing reality. We Catholic Christians look at ordinary limited and even flawed matter and, because we are part of a highly sacramental and incarnational faith, are capable of seeing the extraordinary nature of the most ordinary reality. Wheat and grapes can become bread and wine which in turn can become the very Body and Blood of our Lord. Oil can consecrate us, water can become a means of washing away brokenness and godlessness and initiating us into the very life of God, and a few simple words can raise us to greater wholeness and holiness as they feed some of our very deepest needs. God in Christ teaches us to see in this way, and I believe he especially asks us, in Christ, to see ourselves this way. Again, precious, full of potential and fruitfulness --- or, in the words of Scripture, as imago dei, the very image of God.

Recently I was told a story about someone concerned about disappointing God. It's a common belief. My immediate thought was that God could never be disappointed in us, though I thought he could be disappointed FOR us. When I reflected on my experience of that I realized it is because my own experience of God (especially in prayer and in the people who represent God to me) always has God seeing me in terms of deep truth, essential beauty, and indestructible potential. God is not naive. God, like others in my life, "sees everything" but God loves me beyond all of that (which means he both sees me more deeply and loves me into more abundant life). Even more, God continues to love in that way as I come more and more to allow my life to be defined in terms of this love! I continue to believe that God can be disappointed for me, but not in me and I especially can never believe the God I know loves us because we are pathetic.