02: God Is Love?

The most familiar line in the faith — that God is love — turns out to be the hardest to pin down, so we sit with the difference between defining love and discerning it.

In this episode, Jacob and Sam hit record with no script and follow the feedback that came in after the pilot wherever it leads: a family member’s pushback on whether the real problem is naming or labeling, and a grandmother’s read that the true substance of the quilt — the thing that actually keeps you warm — is love.

Along the way: Genesis 2 and a God who waits to see what the human will call things, Meg tasting salmon for the first time, why Jesus at all if love is the point, and a naturalist’s question — “How do I say your name?” — that turns out to be a way of meeting God.

Less defining, more discerning. Pull up a chair.

Chapters

00:00Intro
00:37Cold open
06:12Welcome back — no script
07:57Naming, or labeling?
09:33What Adam was really doing
16:31Tasting something for the first time
21:01The tree of knowing
23:07Love as the substance of the quilt
25:28Where the metaphor breaks
32:19Why Jesus
35:11Discern, don’t define
41:46Truthing in love
46:49“How do I say your name?”
57:28Love without guarantees

Scripture

1 John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Genesis 2:19 “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”
1 Corinthians 13:4 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
Ephesians 4:15 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

Mentioned

Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing by James K.A. Smith
The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous
Barry Lopez “How do I say your name?” — on first approaching an unfamiliar landscape, quoted in Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark
Tim Mackie (BibleProject) Jesus opening our eyes to what reality is really like
Jiddu Krishnamurti The bird-naming line from the pilot, revisited

From the Table

Turns out throwing pottery is harder than it looks.

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Here’s to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.