The Center of God?

Louis Mauldin, sitting on a bench at a bus stop in Jackson, Tennessee got to visiting with an old man who also was waiting for a bus. In the course of the conversation, Louis asked the fellow if he had ever traveled much. The old gentleman said he had not, then Louis suggested to him some of the advantages of travel, whereupon his new friend said he didn’t need to travel; he pointed and said, “There is north, there is south, there is west, and there is east. I’ve got them all right here. I don’t need to go anyplace else. For the old man, he lived at the center of the world, Jackson, Tennessee.

Some years earlier Louis and I had been in a seminar where Joe Hester was presenting a paper on the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who never traveled more than forty miles from his home in Konigsberg, Prussia because, as Joe told us, Kant believed that Konigsberg was the intellectual and cultural center of the world.

At the seminary where Louis, Joe, and I studied, there was a large rotunda with a map of the world on the floor. A star placed the seminary at the center of the world.

Wherever you believe to be the center of the world, it provides the perspective from which you see all other places. If a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas is the center, then Jackson, Tennessee is somewhat marginal, and Konigsberg is completely out of sight and mind.

For thinking Christians, God is the center of all reality, which is good as far as it goes, but where is the center of God? What in God is central? Is there a place from which to get all else about God in proper perspective? There is no more agreement here than there is among the citizens of the world who would dismiss Jackson, Konigsberg, and Fort Worth and name their own center of the world.
It is very common for Christians to find the divine center in the sovereignty of God. God is in control of all things; he is ruler of the universe. He holds all power and knows all things. Others find the center in the divine freedom. Because he is the Lord God Almighty, he is free to do whatever he pleases, free to create and free to destroy, free to save and free to condemn. Free to love and free to hate. His freedom knows no boundaries. Some locate the essence in a holy, transcendent mystery, a God before whom we stand in awe and fear with no way to plumb the center of such majesty.

Might we consider love, holy love, as the center from which to view all other thought about God? The great creeds, including the Apostle’s and the Nicene Creeds, in their statements of belief in God, completely ignore direct reference to God’s love. The historical confessions of faith, including the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Baptist Faith and Message, give no emphasis to the divine love. In the Westminister Confession, love ranks eighteenth among the varied characteristics of God. The Baptist Faith and Message, in its statement of belief in God give no mention of love, except as owed to God.

When we turn to the great theologians of Christian history (except John Wesley), we find they do not give primacy to God’s love. The faith of ordinary Christians has found one of its most common expressions in the great hymns of the church. When we to turn to the hymnals to find what they say about God, we that they sing most often of the Lord God Almighty, they worship him as the powerful creator, lord and king. They express his holiness and majesty and only then mention his love, if at all. Often love shows up in a third stanza, where it is commonly left unsung.

Certainly there are wonderful exceptions that sing, “Love is the theme, love is supreme,” and “Love Divine, all love’s excelling,” but as exceptions, they only make clear that this is a neglected theme.