Why Belovedness

Why Belovedness?

It's a concept deeply rooted in Scripture.

In the Bible we see a Triune God whose great love for humanity is continuously displayed from beginning to end, culminating in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and his sacrificial love on the cross.

 

Moreover, the ancient Church Fathers saw love as key to our understanding of God and that God’s love for us and our love for God are the driving factors of our lives.

Greeks stressed the mind and thinking aspect of personhood, a philosophy, rebirthed by Descartes and thinkers of the Enlightenment in which the human person was viewed as fundamentally a thinking being (I think, therefore I am). 

 

The early Church Fathers like  St Augustine saw the identity and motivation of personhood differently  Augustine in particularly declared, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” meaning that “to be truly and fully human, we need to ‘find’ ourselves in relationship to the one who made us and for whom we are made.”[1]

Instead of the mind, Augustine names the heart (kardia in Greek) as a person's orienting organ.[2]

It’s not what we know or what we believe that drives our lives, though it’s important that we have that knowledge.For Augustine, what we love, what we desire is what pushes us towards some ultimate telos or ultimate aim. In other words, we are what we love.[3]

It is our love relationship with the living God that transforms our lives.

 

Likewise, well known Christian author and Catholic priest Henri Nouwen who gave up a highly prestigious academic career to care for severely handicapped individuals also stressed the love of God and our belovedness as our core identity.Nouwen claimed that like Jesus in the wilderness, we have multiple voices other than God’s speaking to us and atus to prove that we are worthy, to prove that we have some contribution, or that we are relevant. The key is to stay tuned-in to the One Voice, the Voice that says we are loved as Jesus is loved. With Jesus as our model, we cling to that identity. “I am the beloved; I am God’s favored one.” This is our core according to Nouwen. Part of this understanding involves knowing that we are chosen. “We have been seen by God from all eternity as unique, special, precious beings.”[4]

 

South African Methodist minister and acclaimed author Trevor Hudson has also explored the concept of belovednesss, highlighting the implications of belovedness for daily living.

He encourages us to cultivate a deep sense of God’s love and to allow that awareness to shape our day-to-day decisions and actions. He looks to Jesus as the one who invites us into that beloved identity. “Jesus, the Beloved of God, reveals the truth of our own belovedness.” [5] Moreover, he writes that throughout the gospels in every encounter, “Jesus communicates through his words and deeds the message: You are beloved. Indeed, his entire public ministry enfleshes the astonishing words spoken shortly before his death: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you’ (John 15:9).”[6] With that recognition of our own belovedness we are enabled to extend that love towards others as God’s holy priesthood. Scripture tells us that We love because he first loved us.

 

[1] James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2019), 8.

[2] Smith, You Are What You Love, 8.

[3] Smith, You Are What You Love, 9.

[4] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2014), 53.

[5] Trevor Hudson, 27.

[6] Trevor Hudson, 27.