The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis, John Eldredge, John Eldredge

From the Publisher

In the heart of every person lies an inconsolable longing. Men often know it as the hunger for adventure. Women tend to feel it as a thirst for intimacy. This longing is the secret of our lives. It tells us who we are, what our life was meant to be. If you have ever felt those deep yearnings, we have some really good news: this is what the Gospel truly offers. Life is more than chores and Christianity is more than duty. It is a Sacred Romance -a great love story set in the midst of a life and death battle.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 6:

God the Ageless Romancer

So long as we imagine
it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the
other way about-He is looking for us.

-Simon Tugwell

This is, in fact, how many professing Christians end up living:
as practical agnostics. Perhaps God will come through, perhaps he won't,
so I'll be hanged if I'll live as though he had to come through. I'll
hedge my bets and if he does show up, so much the better. The simple word
for this is godlessness. Like a lover who's been wronged, we guard
our heart against future disappointment.

In my sophomore year in high school I (John) fell in love with
a beautiful junior named Joy. Ourfirst dates were romantic, exciting, and full
of adventure. I gave her my heart. One day several months into the relationship,
I was trying in vain to thumb a ride home when I saw her car approaching. My
heart leaped with anticipation, but Joy whizzed past in her convertible with
another guy at the wheel. Adding insult to injury, she waved gaily as they rushed
by. I felt the fool, which is what we often do when we feel betrayed. And I
never gave her my heart again.

Everyone has been betrayed by someone, some more profoundly
than others. Betrayal is a violation that strikes at the core of our being;
to make ourselves vulnerable and entrust our well-being to another, only to
be harmed by those on whom our hopes were set, is among the worst pain of human
experience.

Sometimes the way God treats us feels like betrayal. We find
ourselves in a dangerous world, unable to arrange for the water our thirsty
souls so desperately need. Our rope won't take the bucket to the bottom
of the well. We know God has the ability to draw water for us, but oftentimes
he won't. We feel wronged. After all, doesn't Scripture say that if
we have the power to do someone good, we should do it (Prov. 3:27)? So why doesn't
God?

As I spoke with a friend about her painful life, how reckless
and unpredictable God seems, she turned and with pleading eyes asked the question
we are all asking somewhere deep within: "How can I trust a lover who is
so wild?" Indeed, how do we not only trust him, but love him in return?
There's only one possible answer: You could love him if you knew
his heart was good. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, brave Nathaniel
has captured the heart of the beautiful Cora. With tremendous courage and cunning,
he rescues her from an ambush set by the black-hearted Magua, leader of a warring
tribe. Nathaniel leads Cora, her sister, and a few other survivors to a hidden
cave behind a waterfall. Just when it appears they will escape and live happily
ever after, Magua and his savages discover their hideout. Once captured, the
women may be spared but the men will surely be executed. With no powder for
their rifles, Nathaniel's only chance is to leap from the falls; by saving
himself, he will live to rescue Cora another day. One of the other men calls
him a coward, accusing him of foul and selfish motives. How is Cora feeling?
What looks like abandonment may not be. Her only hope in the face of such wildness
lies in the goodness of Nathaniel's heart. At this point, it's all
she has to go on. It's all we often have to go on too.

Does God have a good heart? In the last chapter Brent spoke
of God as the Author of the story, which is how most people see him if they
see him at all. And, as Hamlet said, there's the rub. When we think of
God as Author, the Grand Chess Player, the Mind Behind It All, we doubt his
heart. As Melville said, "The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom
dislike him is because they rather distrust his heart, and fancy him all brain,
like a watch." Do you relate to the author when reading a novel or watching
a film? Caught up in the action, do you even think about the author? We identify
with the characters in the story precisely because they are in the story.
They face life as we do, on the ground, and their struggles win our sympathy
because they are our struggles also. We love the hero because he is one of us,
and yet somehow rises above the fray to be better and wiser and more loving
as we hope one day we might prove to be.

The Author lies behind, beyond. His omniscience and omnipotence
may be what create the drama, but they are also what separate us from him. Power
and knowledge don't qualify for heart. Indeed, the worst sort of villain
is the kind who executes his plans with cold and calculated precision. He is
detached; he has no heart. If we picture God as the mastermind behind the story-calling
the shots while we, like Job, endure the calamities-we can't help
but feel at times what C. S. Lewis was bold enough to put words to: "We're
the rats in the cosmic laboratory." Sure, he may have our good in mind,
but that still makes him the "vivisectionist"-the experimenter.

We root for the hero and heroine, even come to love them, because
they are living in the drama. They feel the heartache, they suffer loss
and summon courage and shed their own blood in their struggles against evil.
What if? Just what if we saw God not as Author, the cosmic mastermind behind
all human experience, but as the central character in the larger story?
What could we learn about his heart?

I worked as an actor in Los Angeles for a number of years.
In the theater, when you're preparing to act a part, you want to "get
into the skin" of your character, to discover his motives. What makes him
tick? Why does he do the things he does? Every human action has a motive behind
it. Nathaniel jumps from the waterfall, leaving Cora behind. Why? He lives to
fight another day. Why does he live to fight again? Beneath simple motives lie
deeper purposes. What is it that drives this hero throughout the course of his
life? His love for Cora. Here might be the key to our dilemma: The Scriptures
are written from the perspective that God is the hero of the story. Let's
revisit the drama with the view of God as lead actor. What is his motive? How
does life affect him?

The Larger
Story

Act I: His Eternal Heart

All good fairy tales begin with "Once upon a time,"
and so it is with the truest fairy tale of all. In the beginning, which
is to say, once upon a time, is used twice in the Scriptures. There is the first
verse of Genesis, of course, but we cannot start there because when the curtain
goes up on Genesis chapter 1, it is actually going up on later events, the human
story. We're after God's story, the drama from his perspective, so
we would do better to start with the opening lines from the gospel of John,
which take us back even farther to the once upon a time before time: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning."

The story that is the Sacred Romance begins not with God alone,
the Author at his desk, but God in relationship, intimacy beyond our wildest
imagination, heroic intimacy. The Trinity is at the center of the universe;
perfect relationship is the heart of all reality. Think of your best moments
of love or friendship or creative partnership, the best times with family or
friends around the dinner table, your richest conversations, the acts of simple
kindness that sometimes seem like the only things that make life worth living.
Like the shimmer of sunlight on a lake, these are reflections of the love that
flows among the Trinity. We long for intimacy because we are made in the image
of perfect intimacy. Still, what we don't have and may never have known
is often a more powerful reminder of what ought to be.

Our story begins with the hero in love. As Buechner reminds
us, "God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love
because within himself love happens."

And yet, what kind of love? There are selfish forms of love,
relationships that create closed systems, impenetrable to outsiders. Real love
creates a generous openness. Have you ever been so caught up in something that
you just had to share it? When you are walking alone in the woods, something
takes your breath away-a sunset, a waterfall, the simple song of a bird-and
you think, If only my beloved were here. The best things in life were
meant to be shared. That is why married lovers want to increase their joy by
having children. And so it is with God. "Father," Jesus says, "I
want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am. I want them to be one
heart and mind with us" (John 17). Overflowing with the generosity that
comes from the abundance of real love, he creates us to share in the joy of
this heroic intimacy. One early mystic says we were created out of the laughter
of the Trinity.

Sunday afternoons were my favorite days during summers on my
grandfather's ranch. That's when we'd go "visiting,"
calling on second cousins, great aunts, adopted friends, and other relatives
at their farms. I remember having a warm, settled feeling as I sat on the porch
and listened to the older folks remembering the shared stories of their lives.
My sense of security grew from an awareness that all this had been going on
before me, that though I was part of it, I wasn't responsible for it. It
didn't depend on me. You've heard that children care more that their
parents love each other than that they love them and this is the reason why.
It's the assurance that there is something grand and good going on that
doesn't rest on your shoulders, something that doesn't even culminate
in you, but rather invites you up into it.

And so it is with God's story. Before any of our complex
and sometimes overwhelming smaller stories began, there was something wonderful
already going on: Once upon a time, were Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-the
kind of home we've been looking for all our life. From the beginning, we
know that God is a lover at heart, from all eternity.

Act II: His Heart Betrayed

There was another scene before ours. In Act II, there came
angels. We're not given a great deal of insight into the life of angels,
but we do know that God opened his heart and home to a heavenly host before
us. And for the most part, they seem thrilled to be a part of things. Scripture
never shows us a bored angel. Quite the contrary. We also know there was a cosmic
divorce, a betrayal in the heart of the universe. Satan, then named Lucifer,
turned on his Maker. He rose up against his sovereign Lord, and with him legions
upon legions of angels. There was war in heaven. In Paradise Lost, John
Milton wrestled with the heights of poetic imagery to capture the drama of this
scene:

How shall I relate

To human sense th' invisible exploits

Of warring spirits? how, without remorse,

The ruin of so many, glorious once

And perfect while they stood.

He tells the story of a majestic heavenly banquet thrown by
the Father in honor of the Son. The first member of the Trinity, generous of
heart, freely gives center stage to the second member of the Trinity. Satan
is unable to endure the glory bestowed on Jesus. Satan is jealous for himself
and this kind always ends in murder. Believing that he should have center stage,
Satan draws a multitude of angels into battle against the throne of God:

Arms on armor clashing brayed

Horrible discord; dire was the noise

Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss

Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew

So under fiery cope together rushed

Both battles main with ruinous assault

And inextinguishable rage. All heaven

Resounded; and, had earth been then, all earth

Had to her centre shook.

Deeds of eternal fame were done,

But infinite; for wide was spread

That war, and various; sometimes on firm ground

A standing fight; then, soaring on main wing

Tormented all the air; and all air seemed then

Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale

dire attack

Of fighting seraphim confused, at length

Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled

Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway.

At the approach of Satan, the great archangel Michael "from
his warlike toil surceased," turning to confront the betrayer of their
heaven:

Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt .
. .

How hast thou disturbed

Heaven's blessed peace, and unto Nature brought

Misery, uncreated till the crime

Of thy rebellion. How hast thou instilled

Thy malice into thousands, once upright

And faithful, now proved false . . .

Heaven casts thee out.

Satan mounted his rebellion through the power of one idea:
God doesn't have a good heart. Though it seems almost incomprehensible,
he deceived a multitude of the heavenly host by sowing the seed of doubt in
their minds that God was somehow holding out on them. After the insurrection
is squelched, that question lingers in the universe like smoke from a forest
fire. Sure, God won, but it took force to do it. Power isn't the same thing
as goodness. As the lead actor in the story, God seems generous and self-giving,
but perhaps he's just big. Maybe his motive is simply to be in charge.
At the end of Act II, our hero's heart has been called into question.

Act III: His Heart on Trial

When the curtain goes up on the story of humanity, we see God
in a flurry of breathtaking dramatic actions that we rather blandly call "creation."
Remember, we're looking for the motives of his heart. Why is he doing all
this? We relationship and that he has suffered
a betrayal in the heart of heaven simply for the offense of sharing it. Now
we see him preparing to woo our hearts with a world that is beautiful and funny
and full of adventure. Don't rush ahead to the Fall. Stay here a moment
and feel God's happiness with it all. Yosemite and Yellowstone and Maui
and the Alps; mangoes and blackberries and cabernet grapes; horses and hummingbirds
and rainbow trout. "The morning stars sang together and all the angels
shouted for joy" (Job 38:7 niv).

God creates man and woman and sets them in Paradise. How long
had he been planning this? Are we merely the replacement for the angels he lost,
the first date he can find on the rebound? The first chapter of Ephesians gives
a look into God's motives here:

Long before he laid down earth's foundations,
he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made
whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his
family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He
wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand
of his beloved Son. . . . Long before we first heard of Christ and got our
hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living. (The
Message)

God begins our courtship with a surprise. Taking the blindfold
off, he turns us around and reveals his handmade wedding present. "Here,"
he says. "It's yours. Enjoy yourselves. Do you like it? Take it for
a spin." A lavish gift indeed. What's he up to? Flowers, chocolates,
exotic vacations, dinners a restaurants-any person would feel
pursued. But what are his intentions? Surprisingly, we see in the first glimpse
of God's wildness the goodness of his heart-he gives us our freedom.
In order for a true romance to occur, we had to be free to reject him. In Disappointment
with God, Philip Yancey reminds us that the powers of the Author aren't
sufficient to win our hearts.

Power can do everything but the most important
thing: it cannot control love. . . . In a concentration camp, the guards possess
almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your
God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then
bury your closest friend or even your own mother. All this is within their
power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact
may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created
us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle-the kind
we may secretly long for-do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John
Hall has put it, "God's problem is not that God is not able to do
certain things. God's problem is that God loves. Love complicates the
life of God as it complicates every life."

The wildness of giving us freedom is even more staggering when
we remember that God has already paid dearly for giving freedom to the angels.
But because of his grand heart he goes ahead and takes the risk, an enormous,
colossal risk. The reason he didn't make puppets is because he wanted lovers.
Remember, he's inviting us up into a romance. Freedom is part of the explanat God is the author of some storms directly; but he is
the author of the possibility of all storms in giving us freedom. And we
opened Pandora's box.

Can you imagine if on your honeymoon one of you sneaked off
for a rendezvous with a perfect stranger? Adam and Eve kicked off the honeymoon
by sleeping with the enemy. Then comes one of the most poignant verses in all
Scripture. "What is this you have done?" (Gen. 3:13). You can almost
hear the shock, the pain of betrayal in God's voice. The fall of Adam and
Eve mustn't be pictured as a crime like theft, but as a betrayal of love.
In love God creates us for love and we give him the back of our hand. Why? Satan
gets us to side with him by sowing the seed of doubt in our first parents'
minds: "God's heart really isn't good. He's holding out
on you. You've got to take things into your own hands." And Paradise
was lost.

Yet there was something about the heart of God that the angels
and our first parents had not yet seen. Here, at the lowest point in our relationship,
God announces his intention never to abandon us but to seek us out and win us
back. "I will come for you." Grace introduces a new element
of God's heart. Up till this point we knew he was rich, famous, influential,
even generous. Behind all that can still can hide a heart that is less than
good. Grace removes all doubt.

And then the long story of God's pursuit of humanity begins.
Satan wanted center stage: He wanted to be the main character, he wanted to
be the point. His plan now is to ruin the Sacred Romance, to get us all caught
up in our own little sociodramas by telling us that we are the point. You can
see how humanity goes along with this. Cain murders Abel; Lamech threatens to
murder everyone else. Humanity grows worse and worse until God says in pain,
"I'm sorry I ever made them." But he doesn't give up. First
with Noah, then Abraham, then Israel, we see God pursuing a people whose hearts
will be for him, with whom he can share the joy of the larger story. But their
faithfulness lasts about as long as the morning dew.

How is God feeling by this point? As a person in the story,
what is his heart experience? When we reach the prophets, we get a glimpse at
what it feels like to be God. Reading the prophets, says Yancey, is like hearing
a lovers' quarrel through the apartment wall. Eavesdrop on the argument
and catch a glimpse of his heart:

I long to be gracious to you. You are precious
and honored in my sight, because I love you. But you-come here, you .
. . you . . . offspring of adulterers. You have made your bed on a high and
lofty hill, forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it and
opened it wide. You have been false to me. Yet . . . I will take delight in
you, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will I rejoice over you.
(From Isaiah)

I remember the devotion of your youth, how
as a bride you loved me. . . . What fault did you find in me that you strayed
so far from me? You are a swift she-camel running here and there, sniffing
the wind in her craving-in her heat who can restrain her? Should I not
punish them for this? Should I not avenge myself? I have loved y love; I have drawn you with lovingkindness. What have I done to
make you hate me so much? (From Jeremiah)

I will answer you according to your idols
[your false lovers] in order to recapture your heart. (From Ezekiel)

Return to me and I will return to you. Yet
you have said harsh things about me. You have said, "There's no
pay-off in this relationship. It's not worth loving God." (From
Malachi)

After this, four hundred years of silence. God doesn't
call and when we do he won't answer the phone. You can almost imagine him
nursing his wounds, wondering where it all went wrong. And then an idea comes
to him. Here is Kierkegaard's version of the story:

Suppose there was a king who loved a humble
maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his
power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to
crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble
maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his
kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her
head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not
resist-no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, of course, but
would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief
for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could
he know? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed
escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He d a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that
he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf
between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal. (as
quoted in Disappointment with God)

The king clothes himself as a beggar and renounces his throne
in order to win her hand. The Incarnation, the life and the death of Jesus,
answers once and for all the question, "What is God's heart toward
me?" This is why Paul says in Romans 5, "Look here, at the Cross.
Here is the demonstration of God's heart. At the point of our deepest betrayal,
when we had run our farthest from him and gotten so lost in the woods we could
never find our way home, God came and died to rescue us." We don't
have to wait for the Incarnation to see God as a character in the story and
learn something of his motives. But after the Incarnation there can be no doubt.

There is so much more to say. Jesus left to prepare our place
in heaven; the Spirit has come to empower us to continue the invasion of the
kingdom, which is primarily about freeing the hearts of others to live in the
love of God. There is so much in our own heart that remains to be released.
Our enemy has not given up yet and his target is also our heart. And what of
Act IV, the coming adventures of heaven? All that is for the chapters ahead.
Let's stop here and try to bring this into focus.

What is God like? Is his heart good? We know he is the initiator
from first to last. As Simon Tugwell reminds, God is the one pursuing us:

So long as we imagine that it is we who have
to look for God, we must But it is the other way about;
He is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we
are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high
rebellion against him. And He knows that and has taken it into account. He
has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape
him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety
for ourselves, to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination
to save us, and he will not give in. (Prayer)

When we feel that life is finally up to us it becomes suffocating.
When we are the main character, the world is so small there's barely room
to move. It frees our souls to have something going on before us that involves
us, had us in mind, yet doesn't depend on us or culminate in us, but invites
us up into something larger. And what about the Romance and the Arrows? It wasn't
supposed to be like this. Once upon a time we lived in a garden; we lived in
the place for which we were made. There were no Arrows, only beauty. Our relationships
weren't tainted with fear, guardedness, manipulation, quid pro quo. Our
work was rewarding; we received more than we gave. There is beauty, and we so
long for it to last; we were made for the Garden. But now there is affliction
also, and that is because we live East of Eden. The Arrows seem like the truest
part of life, but they are not. The heart of the universe is still perfect love.

Finally, if we try to relate to God primarily as Author, we
will go mad or despair-pretty much the same thing. I just can't ima characters of a novel affecting the author that much. He may like them,
hate them, be intrigued with mapping out their development, but they don't
impact him the way the people in his real life do. He doesn't live with
them as flesh-and-blood lovers. But when we see God as the Hero of the story
and consider what he wants for us, we know one thing for certain: We affect
him. We impact the members of the Trinity as truly as they do each other.

It is only when we see God as the Hero of the larger story
that we come to know his heart is good.

Where does that leave us? What is our role in the cosmic drama?
Are we bit players, added for dramatic tension, color, comic relief? Neil Anderson
has written that while "The most important belief we possess is true knowledge
of who God is. . . . The second most important belief is who we are as children
of God." In the next chapter, we'll explore our role in the story.

Read a Sample Chapter

CHAPTER 6:

God the Ageless Romancer

So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about–He is looking for us.

—Simon Tugwell

This is, in fact, how many professing Christians end up living: as practical agnostics. Perhaps God will come through, perhaps he won't, so I'll be hanged if I'll live as though he had to come through. I'll hedge my bets and if he does show up, so much the better. The simple word for this is godlessness. Like a lover who's been wronged, we guard our heart against future disappointment.

In my sophomore year in highschool I (John) fell in love with a beautiful junior named Joy. Our first dates were romantic, exciting, and full of adventure. I gave her my heart. One day several months into the relationship, I was trying in vain to thumb a ride home when I saw her car approaching. My heart leaped with anticipation, but Joy whizzed past in her convertible with another guy at the wheel. Adding insult to injury, she waved gaily as they rushed by. I felt the fool, which is what we often do when we feel betrayed. And I never gave her my heart again.

Everyone has been betrayed by someone, some more profoundly than others. Betrayal is a violation that strikes at the core of our being; to make ourselves vulnerable and entrust our well-being to another, only to be harmed by those on whom our hopes were set, is among the worst pain of human experience.

Sometimes the way God treats us feels like betrayal. We find ourselves in a dangerous world, unable to arrange for the water our thirsty souls so desperately need. Our rope won't take the bucket to the bottom of the well. We know God has the ability to draw water for us, but oftentimes he won't. We feel wronged. After all, doesn't Scripture say that if we have the power to do someone good, we should do it (Prov. 3:27)? So why doesn't God?

As I spoke with a friend about her painful life, how reckless and unpredictable God seems, she turned and with pleading eyes asked the question we are all asking somewhere deep within: "How can I trust a lover who is so wild?" Indeed, how do we not only trust him, but love him in return? There's only one possible answer: You could love him if you knew his heart was good. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, brave Nathaniel has captured the heart of the beautiful Cora. With tremendous courage and cunning, he rescues her from an ambush set by the black-hearted Magua, leader of a warring tribe. Nathaniel leads Cora, her sister, and a few other survivors to a hidden cave behind a waterfall. Just when it appears they will escape and live happily ever after, Magua and his savages discover their hideout. Once captured, the women may be spared but the men will surely be executed. With no powder for their rifles, Nathaniel's only chance is to leap from the falls; by saving himself, he will live to rescue Cora another day. One of the other men calls him a coward, accusing him of foul and selfish motives. How is Cora feeling? What looks like abandonment may not be. Her only hope in the face of such wildness lies in the goodness of Nathaniel's heart. At this point, it's all she has to go on. It's all we often have to go on too.

Does God have a good heart? In the last chapter Brent spoke of God as the Author of the story, which is how most people see him if they see him at all. And, as Hamlet said, there's the rub. When we think of God as Author, the Grand Chess Player, the Mind Behind It All, we doubt his heart. As Melville said, "The reason the mass of men fear God and at bottom dislike him is because they rather distrust his heart, and fancy him all brain, like a watch." Do you relate to the author when reading a novel or watching a film? Caught up in the action, do you even think about the author? We identify with the characters in the story precisely because they are in the story. They face life as we do, on the ground, and their struggles win our sympathy because they are our struggles also. We love the hero because he is one of us, and yet somehow rises above the fray to be better and wiser and more loving as we hope one day we might prove to be.

The Author lies behind, beyond. His omniscience and omnipotence may be what create the drama, but they are also what separate us from him. Power and knowledge don't qualify for heart. Indeed, the worst sort of villain is the kind who executes his plans with cold and calculated precision. He is detached; he has no heart. If we picture God as the mastermind behind the story–calling the shots while we, like Job, endure the calamities–we can't help but feel at times what C. S. Lewis was bold enough to put words to: "We're the rats in the cosmic laboratory." Sure, he may have our good in mind, but that still makes him the "vivisectionist"–the experimenter.

We root for the hero and heroine, even come to love them, because they are living in the drama. They feel the heartache, they suffer loss and summon courage and shed their own blood in their struggles against evil. What if? Just what if we saw God not as Author, the cosmic mastermind behind all human experience, but as the central character in the larger story? What could we learn about his heart?

I worked as an actor in Los Angeles for a number of years. In the theater, when you're preparing to act a part, you want to "get into the skin" of your character, to discover his motives. What makes him tick? Why does he do the things he does? Every human action has a motive behind it. Nathaniel jumps from the waterfall, leaving Cora behind. Why? He lives to fight another day. Why does he live to fight again? Beneath simple motives lie deeper purposes. What is it that drives this hero throughout the course of his life? His love for Cora. Here might be the key to our dilemma: The Scriptures are written from the perspective that God is the hero of the story. Let's revisit the drama with the view of God as lead actor. What is his motive? How does life affect him?

The Larger Story

Act I: His Eternal Heart

All good fairy tales begin with "Once upon a time," and so it is with the truest fairy tale of all. In the beginning, which is to say, once upon a time, is used twice in the Scriptures. There is the first verse of Genesis, of course, but we cannot start there because when the curtain goes up on Genesis chapter 1, it is actually going up on later events, the human story. We're after God's story, the drama from his perspective, so we would do better to start with the opening lines from the gospel of John, which take us back even farther to the once upon a time before time: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."

The story that is the Sacred Romance begins not with God alone, the Author at his desk, but God in relationship, intimacy beyond our wildest imagination, heroic intimacy. The Trinity is at the center of the universe; perfect relationship is the heart of all reality. Think of your best moments of love or friendship or creative partnership, the best times with family or friends around the dinner table, your richest conversations, the acts of simple kindness that sometimes seem like the only things that make life worth living. Like the shimmer of sunlight on a lake, these are reflections of the love that flows among the Trinity. We long for intimacy because we are made in the image of perfect intimacy. Still, what we don't have and may never have known is often a more powerful reminder of what ought to be.

Our story begins with the hero in love. As Buechner reminds us, "God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens."

And yet, what kind of love? There are selfish forms of love, relationships that create closed systems, impenetrable to outsiders. Real love creates a generous openness. Have you ever been so caught up in something that you just had to share it? When you are walking alone in the woods, something takes your breath away–a sunset, a waterfall, the simple song of a bird–and you think, If only my beloved were here. The best things in life were meant to be shared. That is why married lovers want to increase their joy by having children. And so it is with God. "Father," Jesus says, "I want those you gave me to be with me, right where I am. I want them to be one heart and mind with us" (John 17). Overflowing with the generosity that comes from the abundance of real love, he creates us to share in the joy of this heroic intimacy. One early mystic says we were created out of the laughter of the Trinity.

Sunday afternoons were my favorite days during summers on my grandfather's ranch. That's when we'd go "visiting," calling on second cousins, great aunts, adopted friends, and other relatives at their farms. I remember having a warm, settled feeling as I sat on the porch and listened to the older folks remembering the shared stories of their lives. My sense of security grew from an awareness that all this had been going on before me, that though I was part of it, I wasn't responsible for it. It didn't depend on me. You've heard that children care more that their parents love each other than that they love them and this is the reason why. It's the assurance that there is something grand and good going on that doesn't rest on your shoulders, something that doesn't even culminate in you, but rather invites you up into it.

And so it is with God's story. Before any of our complex and sometimes overwhelming smaller stories began, there was something wonderful already going on: Once upon a time, were Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–the kind of home we've been looking for all our life. From the beginning, we know that God is a lover at heart, from all eternity.

Act II: His Heart Betrayed

There was another scene before ours. In Act II, there came angels. We're not given a great deal of insight into the life of angels, but we do know that God opened his heart and home to a heavenly host before us. And for the most part, they seem thrilled to be a part of things. Scripture never shows us a bored angel. Quite the contrary. We also know there was a cosmic divorce, a betrayal in the heart of the universe. Satan, then named Lucifer, turned on his Maker. He rose up against his sovereign Lord, and with him legions upon legions of angels. There was war in heaven. In Paradise Lost, John Milton wrestled with the heights of poetic imagery to capture the drama of this scene:

He tells the story of a majestic heavenly banquet thrown by the Father in honor of the Son. The first member of the Trinity, generous of heart, freely gives center stage to the second member of the Trinity. Satan is unable to endure the glory bestowed on Jesus. Satan is jealous for himself and this kind always ends in murder. Believing that he should have center stage, Satan draws a multitude of angels into battle against the throne of God: