Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is love.

This semester I taught a course called “The Ethics of Love.” It was an experimental course based around a book I am writing, Love as a Guide to Morals. According to the students, and my perception too, it turned out to be a very interesting course. One of the assignments was to write a critical philosophical book review of C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. One student, admitting that she is not religious, wrote that she has a greater appreciation for Christianity now because, according to Lewis, the Christian God is all the love in the world. I thought her understanding profound.

Love is an extraordinary expansive and non-exclusive idea. Religions often tend toward exclusion: who is in and who is out, and what you have to do be in and what things keep you out. Of course, we cannot live without making distinctions. It is important to know the distinctive features of apples and oranges; of water, vodka and bleach. If we don’t make such distinctions we could get ourselves into all kinds of trouble! Knowledge and understanding (in fact the whole of philosophy) is built on making distinctions. The education of little children is all about helping them understand the distinctions between what is good for them and what is bad for them.

However, in relational terms, a great human problem is when we use arbitrary distinctions to exclude. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, speciesism—all of the “isms” really—are based on the exclusion of the Other based on some distinguishing feature that makes us “in” and the Other “out.”

One such distinction made popular in the twentieth century was the idea of being “born again.” The idea originated in the writings of the Johannine community in the scriptures. It was variously called “born again,” “born from above,” “new birth,” and “born of God.” In usage it is very close to the idea of becoming enlightened. As an idea it has been present as one of the ways of talking about the human experience and knowledge of God since ancient times. Yet, in recent days it has become a catch phrase for exclusion. The “born-agains” and the “non-born-agains.” Its meaning has also narrowed to a particular form of Evangelical religion. For some it is, “Have you signed the response card?” For some, “Have you said the “sinner’s prayer”? For others, an intense religious experience, filtered through a particular interpretative framework. For others, the assent to a particular set of religions doctrines. Whichever way, it becomes a badge to indicate who is in and who is out

However, for the Johannine community everyone who loves is born of God. Love is expansive and non-exclusive. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Simply, yet ever so profoundly, to be born again is to love. To know God is to love. To live in God is to live in love. The implications of this are far-reaching, imaginative and controversial. Love cuts across religions lines of demarcation. Love cuts across dogmatic differences. The Muslim who loves is as born of God as the Christian who loves as the atheist who loves—for God is love.

I think my student had seen the great possibilities of love. I am grateful to her.

+Ab. Andy