Every rational person is socialized, meaning that they can be polite, help their friends when their friends need someone, etc. This, however, is not evidence of agape love. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being socialized, but all it means is that you are normal. Jesus drew this contrast: After the command to “Love your enemies,” he makes sure no one is confused: “…if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same?” (Matt 5). Loving your friends simply means you are good at being a reciprocal human being, because smart people know deep down that being there for a friend means that she will be there for you when you need a friend – this is completely normal. But since you are the one who benefits here, your love for your friends is, in the final analysis, egoistic. But as we defined agape love, it must be a desire for something that has nothing to do with your own survival, pleasure, or prosperity.
In order to be an atheist, you must be committed to the idea that all love arises naturally through biological and/or sociological mechanisms, and I think it is reasonable to insist that most or even almost all love arises in this way. I like to think of myself as a nice person, but when I love my friends and colleagues, I am really wishing to avoid loneliness and to be successful – it is still all about me. Of course I don’t tell myself this often, but I think that these natural human drives really play a large role in our daily relationships with friends, colleagues, and family. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this, we must be very blunt with ourselves: does this explain all love?
The atheist is not inconsistent by answering “Yes.”; there is no logical contradiction here. But is seems plain to me that there are some who have a real lust for justice on behalf of others; they just get angry about the exploitation of other people (see Part III). Richard Dawkins (part IV) makes it very plain that evolutionary ethics cannot account for this. Darwin himself points out that we are ruthlessly selfish, right down to our genes, and that all apparent altruism can be accounted for as merely the protection of our own genes.
All love is desire for something. Usually, love is egoistic, meaning that it benefits me in some way. This is true both in our love for our friends, and in sexual love. This sort of love is normal, healthy, and human. But there is no good sociological or biological reason why love should be any more than that. If, then, we conclude that there is such as thing as desiring justice on behalf of someone from a different gene pool and/or race or society, then love is a miracle. The atheists keep looking for naturalistic explanations for this phenomenon, but those of us who are religious are not confused about how the natural order of things became ruptured: “God is love.” This also explains why some have both agape AND human love, while some love only humanly: “Everyone that loves has been born of God, and knows God. The one who does not love, does not know God, because God is love” (I John 4). And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether you believe that the proposition “God exists” is true or false. There are many who believe that it is true that are not really lovers, just as there are some, I believe, who really know God despite themselves.
I don’t take these last 6 weeks to add up to an argument for God’s existence. But everyone has many choices about how he or she will view the world, and as rational beings, we can’t help but have opinions about the ultimate nature of our universe. If you find yourself to be someone who lusts for justice on behalf of people you don’t really know, then I insist that for that sake of consistency, you should also believe that God exists and seek how you might worship God.
