Sometimes ambiguity is instructive.
The expression “for the love of God” was popular generations ago. More often than not it was an exclamation: “Oh, for the love of God, get over it!”. At times it was a genuine religious explanation: “I do it for the love of God”. The phrase was a common factor in our jargon then. Strange, isn’t it, that one hears it so infrequently today.
It is, of course, ambiguous. However, regardless of which part of the ‘ambi’ one chooses, each interpretation is constructive. Because the act of love requires two parties, “For the love of God” either means the love an implied someone has for God, or it refers to the love God has for an implied someone. Both ways the message edifies.
This observation is prompted by a television ad now being aired by a prominent financial institution. In rapid sequence it displays a series of loans by which the bank enables borrowers to raise their standard of living. As the ad ends, the message that lingers at the bottom of the screen, and presumably in the minds of viewers, is “For the love of……progress”.
Here there is also ambiguity but of a different kind. Either the expression is a misuse of the word love (which can only exist between persons), or it implies that progress is a person (perhaps by implication a replacement for the person of God). One can see how the phrase itself contributes to the belittlement of love on the one hand or to the deification of progress on the other.
Is this commercial play on the original phrase ‘for the love of God’ innocent or sinister? Readers can decide.
Either way, the existence of progress and the existence of God are neither interchangeable nor mutually exclusive. Indeed, without the latter, the former would not exist. What is more, God wills progress. According to Genesis, our very first divine mandate was to cultivate ourselves and the earth. This is progress. In the Second (New) Testament, Jesus gives us the parable of the talents. Developing our gifts is progress. He also instructs his disciples to ‘go forth’ to the ends of the earth to preach the Good News of salvation. Preaching is progress. Furthermore, he promised to send his Paraclete to guide his followers in his absence. Guidance implies movement, movement forward, as in ‘pro-gress’.
Intended or not the slick slogan ‘For the love of progress’ cannot replace the venerable phrase ‘for the love of God’.
Catholic philanthropy – indeed all philanthropy religiously rooted – also manifests the ambiguity in the expression ‘for the love of God’. Whether prompted by their love for God or acting as channels through which God’s love flows, our donors promote and serve the human dignity of others for the love of God.
Christianity, it has been observed, is a religion of paradoxes. The cross is a symbol of defeat and victory, the last shall be first, one loses one’s life to find it, etc. It appears that ambiguity also attends the Kingdom as it progresses.