The Measureless Game

By Jason Clark

A reflection on the boundless, relational nature of God’s love; exploring amipotence and the mystery of eternal life.

Many years ago…

It was bedtime, and I was snuggling five-year-old Eva. I told a story about a bunny princess named Gertrude who only wore plaid, and a squirrel prince named Hank who only wore cotton pajamas.

I paused for the expected interruption and then listened, smiling to tears, as Eva made her revisions. Gertrude became Lizzy in a beautiful pink dress. Hank became Lizzy’s best friend, Molly. She, too, had a beautiful dress—hers was purple. They also had ponies.

As Eva imagined out loud, I thanked my Father for the wonder of my girl. At that moment, I knew Love like I never had before—eternal life in the ever-present now.

We transitioned from story time into our goodnight communion. “Eva, you’re my favorite. I love you best,” I said. It’s a family phrase, a motto. I say this to all my kids, and it’s true every time. That’s how love works.

“I love you best, too, Daddy,” she responded, and the game had begun.

“I love you to the tops of the trees and back.” I smiled.

“I love you to the tops of the trees, the moon, the stars, to Jupiter, and back.” She knew how to play the game.

I went big. “I love you to the top of the trees, the moon, the stars, Jupiter, the universe, to infinity, and beyond.”

We continued for a few more minutes, each taking turns surpassing the last statement—a million, billion, gazillion infinities, and beyond.

I had just exhausted my imagination with a litany of love when she looked at me mischievously. I could see the wheels spinning in her little mind.

Then she stated, all clever like, “Times two, Daddy.”

“Times-two” flips everything on its head. A five-year-old applies the smallest multiplier she comprehends, and it blows up the foundations of all measurement-based thinking.

We’ve all played this goodnight game in some form or another. And we love this game because it reveals something profoundly beautiful and true.

This is a game of measurements played with a measureless revelation. In it, we apply finite equations to a Love that transcends dimensions of time and space. In it, we endeavor to know eternal life—the ever-present now.

It reminds me of Paul’s attempt in Ephesians to measure the width, length, height, and depth of God’s love, followed by an invitation to be filled to the measure of all God’s fullness. Then Paul blows our measurements and knowledge up with a times-two revelation of a Love that is immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.

His love surpasses knowledge.

I tell this story to set up my first conversation with Thomas Jay Oord. We had him on our podcast, Rethinking God with Tacos. During that discussion, we spent an hour or so trying to measure the measureless love of our mutual friend, Jesus.

I can’t tell you how thankful I am for Tom. He’s been an insightful voice and an encouraging champion of my endeavors to know and reveal the God who is Love. It was life-giving talking with someone as convinced as I am that “all good theology places love at its center.”

When I first read his book title, The Uncontrolling Love of God, I was excited and salty. Excited because I’d written a book on the same subject, titled God Is (Not) In Control. Salty because in the years it took to write that book, I’d searched high and low for a more engaging, less punch-you-in-the-mouth title. You know, something generous and inviting, like Oord’s The Uncontrolling Love of God.

Brilliant!

During our conversation, we discussed his book and its subtitle, which has become his calling card: An Open and Relational Account of Providence.

As I continue to understand it, Open and Relational Theology (ORT) is the idea that God is love and genuinely relational, that creation can influence Him, and that the future is not predetermined but open to possibilities. ORT emphasizes Jesus’ loving relationship with the world and challenges the common view of God’s omniscience and immutability.

I’m a relational theologian; I say it all the time. If Jesus is what God is like, and He is; if He called God “Dad,” and He did; if He’s not ashamed to call us “brothers and sisters and friends” and He’s not; then if we aren’t relational theologians, we’re doing it wrong.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to talk to a fella with academic chops who uses the same relational language. We could have gone for days, you know, discussing the love Jesus revealed in the context of family and friendship—how Jesus reveals a God who became flesh, who walks and talks with us, a relational revelation of the Trinity and our union with them.

But eventually, the conversation turned to the part of Tom’s theology I was less familiar with.

“Help me understand the Open aspect,” I asked.

Thomas: “God knows everything that might happen in the future but does not know with certainty everything that’s going to happen in the future.”

I must have looked like I needed more, he continued.

Thomas: “Do you have any children by chance?”

Jason: “Yeah, I do. I have three.”

Thomas: “Okay. Do you mind my asking their ages?”

Jason: “They’re stepping into adulthood. I’ve got a 22, 20, and 15-year-old.”

Thomas: “Would you say that, at this moment, you love your 40-year-old children?”

I think Tom expected me to pause and ponder the question. In hindsight, I think he’d asked this question before and always had room to interject with the answer.

But I knew the answer in my relational, eternal life, bones! So, I responded with a passionate times-two conviction. Thus, we both spoke at the same time.

Jason: “Absolutely!—”

Thomas: “I don’t think you would—”

He paused, and we both laughed.

I nodded for him to continue.

Thomas: “You might love the idea of your children (but) you don’t love them in that time because that time hasn’t happened yet.”

Jason: “I see what you’re saying. But also,” I grinned, noting how my response had seemed to miss his point, “I do love them (when they are 40) because that’s the nature of love.”

Then I paused. I wanted to understand, so I continued down the road he was leading me on.

Jason: “We have this idea that God sits outside of time. That’s what you’re addressing, right?”

Thomas: “Yeah, I’m rejecting that idea.”

Then Tom referenced the 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards, who used the metaphor of looking at a parade from a church steeple to explain God’s perspective on time and human events. The analogy is often used to illustrate God’s omniscience and the concept of divine foreknowledge.

Thomas: “From that high perspective, God can see the beginning and the end of the parade all at once. Edwards suggested that God sees time simultaneously because God is outside of it. God knows everything that will happen in our future and everything that happened in the past. Open and Relational folks say God’s not up on the bell tower. God’s actually in the parade. God’s moving through time with us moment by moment, not watching us from a distance…but present with us in time…”

I remember thinking, “That’s beautiful, and I believe it’s true. But it also feels incomplete.”

It didn’t seem to answer the all-present nature of love I’d both experienced and read about in Romans 8.

There is nowhere Love isn’t. Neither death, life, angels, demons, present, or future; there’s no height or depth beyond Love; nothing separates us. Thus, to me, God is moving through time with us moment by moment.

If God is love, then God is at the beginning, and the end; He’s before, and after, and everywhere in between.

He’s in every aspect of the parade AND on the church steeple.

I also remember thinking, “Most likely, I don’t get it yet.”

To be clear, whenever I write about the nature of God, and especially when in conversation with brilliant and kind friends, I feel way over my skis. I’m a storyteller who thinks with his heart. I do not write from a place of confident certainty, and my knowledge is limited. But I do write confidently—as the dad of that five-year-old. I write into the eternal-life mystery of a times-two Love that transcends knowledge—as well as dimensions of time and space.

I shared my two thoughts briefly. Tom was gracious, and if we had more time, I imagine we’d have gone deeper. Instead, we wrapped up our conversation with a story about tacos—it’s in the title of the podcast.

And as my friendship with Tom has grown over the years, I’ve been honored to continue the conversation, even being given the opportunity to write a brief essay in response to Tom’s book, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence…

I am fascinated by the conversation around eternal life—and that is what’s happening when we endeavor to describe the sovereignty of Love. Whether we are reframing Omnipotence or, as Tom has done, rejecting and redefining God as Amipotent, at the end of the day, I’m sure Tom and I agree on this—Love is a mystery that surpasses knowledge.

Love incarnated; walked the planet as an expression of union with our Father and Holy Spirit; and invited us to awaken to this same truth, this same ever-present reality.

I believe we are made in the image and likeness of Love, and thus, if I am to live within the truth of my created being, if I am to engage in the ever-present way and shape of my being, in the incarnational nature of Love, if I am to participate in the oneness Jesus demonstrated, prayed over us, and invited us to experience, then the relational answer to the question about my love for my future kids is only and always an eternal-life “yes.”

Even if I’m not there yet.

At the same time, I appreciate Tom’s focus on helping us live in the ever-present now with a trustworthy God—to navigate the sorrows, sins, and disappointments of this world with relational confidence in a trustworthy God.

I think Tom and I are both convinced Love never controls and operates in the context of consent.

I am also growing convinced Love reconciled, reconciles, and is reconciling all things to Himself—inside and outside of time—and we are invited to live with relational confidence in that trustworthy God.

How does that work—I don’t know.

But—

What if relational theology is an invitation to live eternal life—a times-two love that is experienced now and also transcends dimensions of time and space?

Positionally, I’m not 20 years down the road. I’m firmly in the year 2024. But relationally, I’m seated at the right hand of my Father. Relationally, I’m in the cloud of witnesses cheering us on.

Positionally, all things are not reconciled. But relationally, God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Love is working all things for my good.

Positionally, my feet are firmly in the ever-present now. Relationally, I am invited to experience eternal life, the same God-life Jesus experienced and revealed in His fellowship with our Father and Holy Spirit.

My friend Paul Young describes eternal life this way, “It’s not on a timeline; it is the ever-present now.”

The Greek word for eternal is aiónios. It “does not focus on the future…but rather on the quality of the age [to which it relates]. Thus, we live in eternal life right now and can experience this quality of God’s life as a present possession.”

Somehow, we have been invited into the mystery of knowing a Love that surpasses knowledge, of living eternal life in the ever-present now.

To me, love isn’t constrained by time or limited by my understanding. I love my kids today, I know it. AND this love surpasses knowledge. Thus, I love them a million, billion, gazillion infinities, and beyond tomorrow.

Times-two.

I think that’s what Tom is running at with Amipotence, and I’m thankful. Personally, and it’s probably because I don’t fully get it yet, I’m all right with all the Omnis. I think it’s because, like Tom, I continue to rediscover the uncontrolling love of God.

Bio: Jason Clark is a relational theologian—a storyteller who writes to reveal the transforming kindness of the love of God. He has authored several books, including, Leaving and Finding Jesus, God Is (Not) In Control, and Prone to Love. He is the lead communicator at A Family Story and co-host of Rethinking God with Tacos PODCAST. He and his wife, Karen, live in North Carolina with their four children, Madeleine and Joseph, Ethan, and Eva. You can learn more about Jason at afamilystory.org or jasonclarkis.com

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Jason Clark uses personal stories and anecdotes to explore God‘s relation to love and time. Jason believes that “love is a mystery that surpasses knowledge.“ He is not interested in making a claim about God‘s relation to time. I agree with him that we can experience eternal life now. But “eternal life“ is not a statement about time, it’s a statement about a quality of life. I’m probably prone more than Jason to using language as precisely as I can and thinking about God’s relation to time and creation. But I admit that language cannot capture love or God fully.

Note: For more on why Oord thinks we should make decisions about God’s relation to time, see this essay.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.