I Need a Love Framework

My number one goal is to live a life of love. That goal gives purpose to my life. It’s my primary intention.

Because love is central, I seek a framework to make sense of love and the world. In my new book, I argue that Open and Relational Theology provides the best overall framework to answer my deepest questions about and to make sense of love.

Motivated to Love

Having a coherent love framework doesn’t guarantee I’ll always love. I try to love consistently. But I sometimes fail. An adequate theology of love provides confidence that my aim to love makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

I wouldn’t be motivated to love, for instance, if I thought I wasn’t free. I’d just do what I thought was predetermined and assume my self-centeredness was pre-decided.

I wouldn’t be motivated to prevent suffering if I thought God could do it singlehandedly. I’d assume the pain I encounter is part of a plan God designed. I’d assume victims get what they deserve.

Making Sense of Love

I couldn’t make sense of love—creaturely or divine—if my conceptual framework said it was not relational, which some conventional theologies claim. No, I believe love relationships are real.

I couldn’t love if I thought values were illusions and the categories of better and worse were entirely my preference. That’s extreme relativism, and love makes no sense without values.

I couldn’t love a God who sends people to eternal torment. And I wouldn’t make sense to me to love those I thought God was sending there. If God wants them to suffer forever, so should I.

I doubt I’d care for creation if I thought God didn’t care for it too. I might just let it burn, drown, and starve.

And so on.

A Love Framework

A love-based view of reality can make an enormous difference to how you and I live. If love is the greatest, the ultimate, the highest aim of God and existence, we ought to embrace theologies that make sense of that preeminence.

I believe open and relational theology makes sense of love’s supremacy better than any other. In the final chapter of Open and Relational, I spell out some of the details of what this means. I address self-love, other-love, love for God, and love for creation. I also address God’s own love and why so many theological frameworks make no sense.

Open and relational theology provides the most adequate conceptual framework for a theology of love.

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