God’s Powerful Love Is in Us, Too
By Jeff Wells
Amipotence is a primary characteristic of God. It’s also infused in and expressed through us.
I am an evangelist for open and relational theology (ORT). The congregation I serve has strongly embraced ORT as a key theological lens by which it thinks about God and acts in the world. Thomas Jay Oord defines love as “acting intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. This definition applies to both divine and creaturely love. The love God and creatures express, in other words, acts with intention, relates with others, and aims to promote flourishing. And because love is inherently uncontrolling, neither divine nor creaturely love controls.”[1]
Thus, loving power is not only a part of God’s character, but is a part of our human character, too. The impulse and the ability to love is infused and empowered in each of us through the love of God working in and through us. Yet, the love in us often gets suppressed or subverted by the multiple ways we are taught to fear, condemn, or hate others or by the ways we are harmed, abused, or traumatized by others. This is what makes the vision of the amipotent God so crucial to the potential for moving us toward the great possible thriving for all humans and beyond human creatures. Richard Rohr has written:
“Love is our foundation and love is our destiny. It is where we come from and where we’re headed. As St. Paul famously says, ‘So faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love’ (1 Corinthians 13:13). [And] “My hope, whenever I speak or write, is to help clear away the impediments to receiving, allowing, trusting, and participating in a foundational Love. God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit who, according to Jesus, ‘will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you’ (John 14:26). Love is who you are.”[2]
God is not separate and distant, intervening at discrete moments of our lives. God is present every moment, leading, beckoning, and inspiring us toward the best possible outcomes and the best possible future not only for ourselves, but for the whole of the evolving, creative order. God is not external to us but is in us and we are in God. Moreover, we are fundamentally connected with one another and with all elements of the universe. So, in the Church of the Village we sing, “I am in you, and you are in me, and we are in God” (meditation-song by Natalie Renee Perkins). So, God is in us and calling us to express—through our thoughts, words, and actions—the powerful, uncontrolling love that is already in us.
Since powerfully persuasive love is the primary element of God’s character, it makes sense that love would also be the primary element in the character of human beings, as well. If this is true, the “image of God” metaphor from the Book of Genesis (and developed in classical Christian theology) is primarily about love. Yet how, then, do we explain the widespread expressions of hatred, racism, sexism, violence, war, homicide, and genocide among humans?
As Oord points out, God’s love is universal, always present, all knowing, endlessly persistent, and everlasting. Therefore, God is able to envision and seeks to call forth the greatest possible well-being for the entire universe at every moment and into a foreseeable future (although future vision changes moment to moment in response to how the universe acts and evolves). Our amipotent God is perfectly loving and cannot act except out of love.
Humans, on the other hand, are limited in our perspective, knowledge, and understanding. While we each have in us the potential to love, we also have the ability to choose (consciously or unconsciously) to act in ways that are not loving. We are free to reject God’s ever-present call to love. We are limited in our vision of what the most loving action is in a given circumstance and cannot always easily discern how our actions will impact others. Also, we are subject to having our “impulse to love” damaged or suppressed by ways we suffer harm, trauma, miseducation, and poor role models. Sometimes, the damage done to our ability to act on the powerful divine love within us causes us to hate, diminish, and harm rather than intentionally and relationally promoting well-being.
God seeks to manifest love not only through individual human beings (and other creatures), but through human relationships and human communities, as well. Therefore, we have to be as open as possible to hear God’s lure, beckoning, and inspiration. This persuasive loving influence come directly from God, but also through our relationships with other human beings, spiritual practices, social and political action, the arts, our experience of nature, and more.
All of this makes it imperative that we work to strengthen familial and communal ways to learn and practice love together. From my own perspective as a progressive Christian pastor, I think one of the best and most effective ways to do this is in healthy faith communities. My vision of a healthy faith community is one that strives to be broadly inclusive, values and seeks diversity, downplays dogma and doctrine in favor of a generous openness to learn from one another, builds deep interpersonal relationships, undermines hierarchy and works collaboratively, and promotes mutual love, care, and compassion. These are ways of practicing powerful, uncontrolling love.
It seems abundantly clear to me that if humanity is to survive, we will have to learn to practice love much more robustly and universally. We need to learn to listen more deeply for God’s loving lure—individually and together. God is in loving relationship with couples, groups, and communities, large and small. Let’s stop “bowling alone” (a la Robert D. Putnam) and strengthen participation in loving community with others. To me, this requires we get back to the most important teachings of Jesus: 1) love God and your neighbor as yourself and 2) love your (perceived) enemies and pray for them. Work hard to build friendships. Reach across the walls and fences that separate us. Let’s be curious and get to know those who we perceive as opponents or enemies. Let’s become builders of love bridges, from the person next door to the nation across the globe.
God’s love calls us to engage in all of these attitudes and behaviors. They are ways we exercise and build up our capacity to love, feel empathy, yield to others, and give ourselves for others. With God’s inspiration and leading, we must open ourselves to the truth that if we are to survive, we have to open our eyes to see the oneness of humanity by seeing the divine in each other. We have to learn to value our differences and diversity and see past each other’s limitations, misunderstandings, and shortcomings. We have to learn to see every element of nature around us the way God sees them—as beloved. Every grain of sand, every drop of water, every clump of soil, every microorganism, fungus, insect, plant, bird, and mammal as inherently valued, celebrated, and loved. Then, we will be able to co-create with God a “new creation” of ecological harmony and love. Then, we will learn to let go of “us” vs. “them” and grasp that we are all connected with one another through the powerful, uncontrolling love of God.
Bio: Jeff Wells is the lead pastor of the Church of the Village in New York City, where he preaches and practices from an open and relational perspective. He co-edited (with Thomas Jay Oord, Vikki Randall, Nichole Torbitzky) the book, Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God: Sermons, Essay, and Worship Elements from the Perspective of Open, Relational, and Process Theology (2024). Website: www.jeffrywells.love.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Jeff Wells is an evangelist for open and relational theology, largely because of what it reveals about God’s loving character and immediate presence in our lives. God differs from us in being universal, ever-present, everlasting, and perfectly loving. Yet we are called to grow in love, gradually reflecting divine goodness in our own relationships. Such progress, Wells suggests, becomes possible as we strengthen family and community bonds. Together, we can cultivate attitudes and actions that embody the uncontrolling love of God, fostering care, cooperation, and shared transformation. For Wells, genuine community is where divine love becomes real and active.
For more on Oord’s view of open and relational theology, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence (SacraSage, 2023). Kindle edition, p. 126.
[2]. Richard Rohr, “Our Foundation Is Love,” (https://cac.org/daily-meditations/our-foundation-is-love-2015-12-27, Accessed 11-21-24).