Person-2-Person - March, 2019

Earlier this year, African actor Richard E. Grant finally received a reply to a fan letter he sent forty-seven years ago when he was fourteen. Grant, who is today an Oscar nominated supporting actor, wrote a fan letter to actress and singer Barbra Streisand, following her breakup with actor Ryan O’Neal.

A fourteen-year-old Grant wrote to Streisand from his home in Swaziland, “. . . to offer you an idea you might like to consider.” Unfortunately, he never received a reply. But this January, he tweeted about the letter and included a selfie he took near her Malibu, California home, and a photo of his letter. Within hours, he received a personal reply from Streisand, in which she congratulated him on his latest film role: “What a wonderful letter you wrote me when you were 14 . . . You’re terrific in your latest movie . . . Congratulations and love Barbra.” Grant was delighted and a bit overwhelmed by her reply. After all, it’s not every day you hear from one of your idols, especially after nearly fifty years.

We all like to get “fan letters,” even if they’re only small notes of encouragement from a parent or spouse, from the people who love us. Even better are love letters. But as we know, sometimes love letters don’t get answered—or we don’t get or can’t give the answer we’d like. Everyone has felt “unrequited love” at one time or another. And unfortunately, God is no different. Throughout history, God has offered us God’s love, only to have it rejected time and again.

The late evangelist Billy Graham wrote that, “The Bible is God’s ‘love letter’ to us, telling us not only that He loves us, but showing us what He has done to demonstrate His love.” It sounds wonderful. A “love letter” from God. How amazing. But there are others who disagree. Rev. Stephen Altrogge, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Indiana, Pennsylvania, writes that, “It’s absolutely right to say the Bible shows us God’s incredible, overwhelming, gale-force love for us. / But the Bible isn’t a love letter from God to us.”

Altrogge’s perspective comes from his belief that, “A love letter is primarily about the recipient.” He goes on to write, “Here’s the crucial difference between the Bible and a love letter: the Bible is NOT about us.” Personally, I would disagree. I look at the Bible as the story of our interactions with God. To me, it tells us much more about our spiritual ancestors and what they believed than it does about God. The difference comes down to whether we believe that God wrote the Bible or that humans—faithful, inspired, well-intentioned humans but still humans—wrote it. If you know me, you know I’m in the latter camp. The important, the vital thing to remember is that they believed God loved them and loves us today, and they believed it for a reason.

In large measure, the Bible is an account of laws, of dietary regulations, of genealogies, history, and more, in some respects about as romantic as a contract or textbook. But when it’s about God’s love it doesn’t hold back. In Jeremiah 31:3(b), God says to the people of Israel, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; / therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” (ESV). This passage was written during a time of great tribulation for Israel and it’s still encouraging today to read about God’s “everlasting love.” In John’s gospel, Jesus prays for the disciples, “‘. . . that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.’” (John 17:23b ESV). If God loves us as God loves God’s own child, then God loves us very much indeed.

So perhaps the Bible isn’t a “love letter,” and it isn’t a “fan letter.” Maybe instead it’s a love story, written by us about our centuries-long relationship with a God who loves us more than we deserve, and never stops. Jesus told the disciples, “‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments.’” (John 14:15 ESV). If we keep God’s commandments, we’re keeping history’s greatest love story alive for everyone to see.

“‘[T]hat they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.’” (John 17:22b-24 ESV.)