Intersect

God of all existence, obliterate the carbonized crust of debilitating thought suffocating and imprisoning the luminosity of my being. Overwhelm me with love that spills into the world and eradicates the poisons holding us hostage from our cosmic, divine union. Loving, Holy One, in the manner of Jesus Christ, I empty myself to be filled with you. Transform my ignorance into awareness; my selfishness into compassion, and my anger into love. Amen.

1 JOHN 4:7-11 ( The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart) Beloved ones, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born out of God and knows God. Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love. By this, the love of God was made manifest in us, because God has sent his only Son into the cosmos so that we might live through him. Since God loved us this much, we must love each other. I love John’s sentiment and reasoning:  We should love each other because God loved us first. God is love, so if we want to know God, we must know love. Specifically, we must love each other as  unequivocally as God loves us. That’s a big ask because John argues that God loves us so much that God incarnated—and willingly died—as  one of us to show us the way to a new life in a new world.  Over the millennia this has come to be interpreted to mean that if you’re a good Christian today (whatever a good Christia...