Living Loved

why God’s love is constant through suffering and joy

Cosmos, Leo Villareal, Cornell Johnson Museum of Art (night) | photos by Estelle Hooper

This article is part of the Claritas spring 2023 issue, Love. Read the full print release here.

By: Jesusla Sinfort

This year, Cornell Perfect Match—a student-designed matchmaking survey—received over 4,500 submissions. [1] Survey respondents were asked a range of questions from “the worst thing a match could wear to a date” to whether or not the match’s personality being compatible was essential. Cornellians want romance. Thousands of us place hope in algorithms to find the perfect partner. 

However, our perceptions of love are unreliable because our romantic love framework generally tells a story of a transactional relationship. [2] In order to receive the feel-good love that we desire, we need to live up to the world’s ever-changing standards for deserving love. And unfortunately, as we strive to understand God’s transcendent nature, we often force God’s love into our restricting framework for romantic love. However, God’s love transcends every love narrative that we use to navigate our relationships with others. His love is not conditional on whether we meet certain physical, personality, or even character standards, nor will it always induce the feel-good situations in our lives. What does it mean for God to love us personally?

Unlike deities in other religions, God loves us in spite of our shortcomings because “God is love”—a phrase that declares the essence of God. It has its roots in John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” This verse articulates the greatest act of love—God taking on human flesh by sending His son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross as an atonement for our sins [3]. God freely offers the gift of eternal life to everyone because of his unconditional love for us. 

God’s love for the world is not only all-embracing but profoundly individualized. Indeed, my favorite moments in life are when the overflow of God’s love for me manifests as gifts of opportunity. Sociological research shows that “evaluations (feelings) of “goodness” and “badness” plays a defining role in shaping our perceptions.” [3] This is how we think about romantic partners: If we enjoy being with them, we must be in love. Therefore, the feel-good moments in our lives that mark the loving hand of God help us feel God’s love as personal, and not solely love received by virtue of our membership in mankind. 

It follows that moments of badness tend to cloud our perceptions of God’s love for us. As a transfer sophomore entering Cornell, I struggled with adapting to a challenging collegiate environment that didn’t feel the most inclusive while trying to find community in a secular arena. I sprained my left ankle within the first few weeks of my first semester, which made adjusting to my new environment even more difficult. I still remember the piercing pain that restricted my day-to-day activities and lingered for weeks. In that season, I struggled to feel loved by God due to classifying my physically and emotionally strenuous challenges as a bad thing. Fortunately, leaning into the truth of God’s love for me reconciled the cognitive dissonance between knowing that God loves the world and feeling that God does not love me personally. 

The biblical story of Job illustrates the complexity of God’s love, and reminds us not to perceive God’s love through the paradigm of our situations. Job was a wealthy, prosperous and God-fearing man who lost his earthly possessions, friends, children and lastly, his health. The intensity of his suffering led him to question whether not being born would’ve been better than enduring so much pain. If we solely associate feel-good moments with God’s love, Job’s sufferings appear to suggest that God does not love Job. However, nothing transpired outside of God’s sovereign control over and love for Job’s life. God poses pointed questions to Job about the creation and control of the Universe to remind Job of his ultimate control over everything. His questions included broad questions about the universe. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Who marked off its dimensions?... Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?” God also included more specific questions to illustrate that He is God of the small things too. “Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?” [5] 

It consoles Job that he could not respond with a yes to these questions because it compelled him to trust God. In praising God he asserted, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” [6] Despite all of Job’s suffering, he did not curse God because he trusted in God’s love for him. At the end, God showers Job with blessings by restoring all that he lost several folds. 

The story of Job not only reveals God’s restoration power but His sovereignty over both the suffering in Job’s lives and the feel-good ending. Whether God restored all the material possessions that Job previously enjoyed has no bearing on God’s love because it is unchanging. Likewise, the sufferings we experience should not have any bearing on how we understand God’s love. For the absence or presence of dark seasons in our lives does not correlate with the absence or presence of God’s love. Before God created us, He loved us. [7] And this reality, coupled with the unchanging character of God, means that nothing can alter God’s love for us. Therefore, our life circumstances are not accurate determinants of God’s love. We are assured of God’s unchanging love in Romans: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [8] Therefore, Job did not wrestle with his sufferings alone because even his sufferings were limited by the sovereign love of God. 

We also benefit from a consciousness of being personally loved by God for reasons perhaps beyond our expectations: There are health benefits to feeling loved by God. Jeff Levin, a researcher at Baylor University, carried out a clinical study to assess the implications of “religious love,” defined by the feeling of loving and being loved by God. He found a statistically significant association between a loving relationship with God and positive self-ratings of health. [8] This association withstood controlling for the effects of several hypothesizing mediating factors. Among his many hypothesized reasons, Levin theorized that an intimate relationship with God brings people divine blessings, such as improved health. He notes that this supernatural influence would be hard to measure scientifically. Nevertheless, his research shows that loving and being loved by God exerts a positive influence on perceptions of health, exemplifying practical benefits to living under the consciousness that you are loved by God. 

Furthermore, these benefits overflow into our relationships with others. Researchers at Mississippi State University explored whether someone’s relationship with a personal loving God produced a cognitive scheme that influenced their views towards public policy. In their study, the closeness of one’s relationship with God was defined by their scale, Personal Loving God. They found that the closer one’s relationship with God, the less likely they were to support the death penalty for convicted murderers. [9] This conveys an association between a close relationship with a loving God and a greater capacity to forgive others. The tendency to extend grace to those generally regarded as the most undeserving of grace is a response to the personal love of God we receive, although we are undeserving. Even in the most subtle ways, the love of God helps us love others as He loves us—unconditionally. 

The love of God can more easily transform our lives if we allow ourselves to be receptive to His personal love. From struggling to pass a course to looking for a perfect match, the love of God is inconceivably sufficient to comfort us through the various lows of life. From our greatest concerns to the least of our worries, God cares about it all because He loves us individually. Not only does a relationship with God guarantee eternal life at the end of our lives, the relationship itself guarantees a divine life in this life. [10] 

In this life, you will experience many highs and lows, but the revelation that God loves you personally is the best bulwark for your soul against the sufferings to come. Unlike our relationships with our algorithmically-discovered perfect matches, our relationship with God is the only relationship that guarantees personal love prevailing to the indefinite end. 

This article appeared in Claritas’ spring 2023 Love Issue

Sources

[1] Cornell Perfect Match. https://perfectmatch.ai/. 

[2] Werner, Carol M., and Barbara B. Brown. “A Transactional Approach to Interpersonal Relations: Physical Environment, Social Context and Temporal Qualities.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 9, no. 2 (1992): 297-323. Accessed April 28, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075920920. 

[3] 1 John 4:9-10

[4] Job 38

[5] Job 1:21

[6] Ephesians 1:4

[7] Romans 8:38-39

[8] Levins , Jeff. “God, Love, and Health: Findings from a Clinical Study.” Review of Religious Research 42, no. No. 3 (2001): pp.277-293(17 pages). Accessed April 11, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2307/3512570.

[9] Unnever, J. D., Cullen, F. T., & Bartkowski, J. P. (2006). Images of God and public support for capital punishment: Does a close relationship with a loving God matter? Criminology: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 44(4), pp.835–866 

[10] John 10: 27-28