What we have said in the two previous editorials leads us to think that the Love of God –or, simply, Love –, as it comes across in Revelation and particularly in the New Testament, is the most fascinating and wonderful reality there is: all things derive from it or participate in it. It is the reality of Being Itself, for Love and Being are one and the same, as the Song of Songs puts it:

            For love is strong as Death,//passion as relentless as Sheol.//The flash of it is a flash of fire,//a flame of Yahweh Himself.//Love many waters cannot quench,//neither can torrents drown it.//Were a man to offer all his family wealth to by love,//contempt is all he would gain (Song 8: 6—7).

            Since it is the basis and the soul of all Revelation, and even the very essence of the New Testament, love cannot be seen but as something truly wonderful and terrific. It is the first and greatest reality that exists in the universe, and the only one that has existed from all eternity. Since Love is God Himself, what could a man offer in exchange for it; what better thing could he hope for? As we have seen, The Song of Songs believes that were a man to offer all his family wealth, contempt is all that he would gain.

            The Love of God, or Love, if you wish, has been given to men as a wonderful gift and, as such, it is urgent, piercing, compelling, impulsive, hasty, jealous, intransigent, all-absorbing, antagonistic to delay and compromise, exclusivist, generous to the end, even to the point of giving its very self, and as massive and solid as being itself. It could not be otherwise, now that the beloved is not, for the lover –nor is the lover, for the beloved—merely someone who is important or not really important, someone who can be possessed or whose possession matters nothing at all, someone who can be near or whom one is ready to await serenely if he is still far away, someone who can be essential to one’s own life or just another thing among those which form the warp and weft of that life. It is not at all like that: what each of the lovers means to the other is nothing less than his own life and the object of all the longings of his very existence.

            Therefore, the trendy Pastoral Approach of pleasing everybody is simply a corruption of the New Testament message as it reduces it to a body of doctrine with very scant supernatural content. All indications are, as this Approach sees it, that it is as if things lacked sharp poignant reality and do not matter very much. It takes as real a series of principles whose questioning will not be tolerated. These include the following –but the list does not claim to be exhaustive:

            That above all, one needs to believe in the goodness of all men and to proclaim Tolerance and Understanding as the supreme virtues. Given that radicalism is the worst sin –and maybe the only sin –, one needs to take up a stance which regards strong convictions as harmful, and therefore very much to be avoided. It is equally necessary, also, that the various religions live together in a climate of mutual cooperation (after all, deep down, all religions are equally good); this is made possible once any stand is regarded as suspicious which argues that there is such a thing as incontrovertible dogma and truth.

            The Classics said that the gods make crazy those men they want to damn. On its part, The New Testament states that men have made a choice for the Lie and have joyfully adhered themselves to it. There is just one thing to do: wait and see the consequences.