Love is Above the Law & Love Breaks the Rules

Spiritual Advantage with Sam Stone

When I was in college, a friend invited me to join a Wisdom Society. We were required to write a philosophical essay every month, and the best essay received an award and was published. The first assignment was titled “God Created Humans or Humans Created God.”

It was thought-provoking but not as easy to write as I had expected. Even though I didn’t win the contest, the topic stayed in my head for over 30 years: Did God create humans, or did humans create God? I’m open-minded, and I like to investigate the truth. Wrestling with this topic does expand your wisdom.

I’ve discovered that the best way to answer this question is by figuring out the second part, “Did humans create God?” because it’s easier to prove than the first.

If God created humans, God is the higher intelligence. It’s harder for the lower intelligence to understand the higher one.

If humans created God, we are the higher intelligence, and it would be easier to reverse-engineer our creation to figure out why and how we created God.

As humans, we create things to meet necessities. We made airplanes to meet the necessity of traveling faster and farther. We created countries and territories to meet the necessity for security. Otherwise, we could have lived in a global village without borders.

We created kings and presidents because leadership is necessary. We need someone to call the shots; the buck must stop somewhere.

If God is also our creation, what human need necessitates our creation of God? I’ve discovered that humans need a moral compass or a North Star to orient our lives for meaning and purpose. God meets that human need.

Then, it becomes a catch twenty-two situation. If we need God to have a moral compass, the moment we realize God is our own creation, the magic stops working because we are following our own artificial North Star.

When you say, “Humans created God,” you become an atheist instantly? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be a theist and be a creator of God. Atheists don’t believe in God because they believe God is a human invention.

They also argue that human belief in God evolves with time. They say, “If God is true, why does theology evolve along with human evolution? If God existed, he wouldn’t have changed over time. Therefore, God is a human creation.

That’s also a catch-twenty-two logic. If belief in God is part of human evolution, then wouldn’t it make atheists less evolved? In fact, some cultures do believe atheism to be barbaric. Civilized societies are God-believing societies.

If you think deeply enough, there is no logical argument for “Humans created God.” Instead, the need for meaning and a moral compass are clues that God created humans.

John Calvin said we are born with a sense of divinity and a seed of religion. That’s why you see religions and philosophers all over the world in search of the Creator. Saint Augustine put it succinctly,

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” ~Saint Augustine

We didn’t create God to rest our restless hearts; our hearts are restless because God created us to rest in God. After digging into the great minds from past to present and East to West, there is only compelling logic to argue for “God created humans.”

If “God created humans” is more logical, why do we have atheists, and some of them are pretty smart? After talking with many atheists, I discovered that organized religions turn them off. They can’t differentiate religions from God.

God created humans, but humans created religions. Religion is not equivalent to God. The atheists got it wrong. God is not a problem; religions are. When religions corrupt, they blame it on God. They say, “If there’s a God, why can’t he even keep his church in order?”

What they don’t understand is that God created humans with responsibility, not as puppets. God created humans with free will so our love can be genuine.

Jesus didn’t come to establish a religion but to rekindle our relationships with God and with people. So, Christianity is not a religion but a relationship. That’s what Jesus’ Great Commandment is about—love God and love people—nothing more and nothing less.

Religions set rules, but relationships sow love. We see Jesus frequently breaking the rules, triggering the religious leaders’ anger. He didn’t break the rules to be rebellious but to show us that corrupt religions turn people off by valuing rules above love.

So, today, let’s explore how Jesus broke the rules and why so we can learn when to break the rules to maintain loving relationships and avoid loveless religiosity based on this week’s scripture lessons. Let’s begin!