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In this episode John and Gregg discuss Gregg’s view of love and how / to what degree he believes that experiencing God’s love is necessary to embracing Christianity.

Gregg notes that through some of his interaction at Swiss L’Abri he is coming to see several things more clearly.  First, that he needs to do more research on the nature of emotions.  For instance, Gregg finds Margret Nussbaum‘s description helpful.  Nussbaum partially defines emotions as “intelligent responses to the perceptions of value,” such that emotions are “acknowledgements of our neediness and our lack of self-sufficiency.”  Finally then, “emotions are not just the fuel that powers the parts of a reasoning creature, they are parts–highly complex and messy parts–of this creature’s reasoning itself.”
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In this episode John and Gregg complete their discussion of Darin Hufford’s book The Misunderstood God.  John notes that both he and Gregg decided not to discuss all the chapters, while Gregg notes that the same themes are recurring in different chapters (and under different topics).

John gives the book three out of five stars and summarizes it in two ways.  First, by noting how it provides answers to the question of “what” God is or does (such as God being ‘love’) without offering much regarding “how” one comes to see or experience God in this way.  Second, by noting that the book would be much more credible if Hufford offered some form of substantiation for his views instead of asserting that “this generation” does X or fails to do Y.  Particularly, having biblical references when referring to matters concerning God and Christianity would be helpful.
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In this episode John and Gregg discuss Chapter 11 of Darin Hufford’s Misunderstood God.  John notes, after having read to this point, that the book does not seem to have any continuity between chapters, which makes it harder to follow.  John also sees interesting connections between this chapter and Episode #33: “God is Not an Idiot.”

Gregg re-read chapters 8 to 10 in considering this chapter, and notes his goal of identifying some of the problematic themes or orientations in order to re-orient towards what seem better formulations or orientations.  So Gregg notes the two issues of Darin globalizing his experience to his readers and also misformulating matters. Also, page 93 seems to be key for Darin as he notes, “imagine my surprise when I discovered that the experience of love is not in receiving it but in giving it.”

John finds this one-sided: surely we also experience (and so understand) love in receiving it!  Gregg’s view is that the Christian’s perspective on loves is necessarily informed by the new testamental description of God: as both sovereign and as Father.  In terms of God’s love for us, as father, this is accompanied by the idea that human love is always responsive to God’s love.  In other words, we know God’s love by receiving it.
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