"Reckless Love" is a Reckless Phrase
Cory Asbury's song "Reckless Love" is wonderfully right-hearted. This contemporary Christian song describes how selfless God's love is, through lyrics full of subtle biblical references and decorated with polyptoton, asyndeton, and parallelism—all atop a simple, elegant chord progression.
But the song is painfully wrong-headed. Underneath all that artistry is repeated a subtle untruth: that God's love can be called "reckless."
Now, Asbury explained his rationale online, claiming that God "simply gives Himself away on the off-chance that one of us might look back at Him and offer ourselves in return."[1] But his explanation misunderstands either the English language or biblical doctrine.
In everyday usage, the word "reckless" is always negative: reckless drivers, reckless investments, reckless teenagers, and so on. This is because recklessness is doing something risky and disregarding the consequences; as Merriam-Webster defines it, "marked by a lack of proper caution." This basic idea is echoed by Collins Dictionary,[2] Oxford Learner's Dictionaries,[3] Webster's College Dictionary,[4] and Vocabulary.com.[5]
But can this be truly spoken of God? Well, "proper cautiousness" is a meaningless term when we're talking about a sovereign and omniscient Being. Romans 8:29 says that God predestined those He foreknew (Romans 8:29 [NIV]), not those He "fore-gambled." Ephesians 1:4 says that God "chose us . . . before the creation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4), not that God decided to throw caution to the wind, offer up His life, and let the chips fall where they may. But this is exactly what Asbury implies when he says that God gives Himself away on an "off-chance" we might choose Him.[6] If God's love is reckless, then God isn't "properly cautious." Then God isn't sovereign and omniscient. Then God isn't God.
The truth of a Christian song's lyrics is the most important part of the song. We could write the most beautiful song in praise of God the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, but unless God actually is that, our song is a bottle of poison wrapped in cute wrapping paper. The song "Reckless Love" does not worship God both in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).
1. "New from Cory Asbury—Reckless Love," Multitracks.com Blog, Multitracks.com, October 31, 2017, https://www.multitracks.com/blog/new-from-cory-asbury-reckless-love/.
2. "Reckless," Collins Dictionary, HarperCollins Publishers, accessed December 8, 2021, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/reckless.
3. "Definition of Reckless Adjective," Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Oxford University Press, accessed December 8, 2021, https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/reckless.
4. "Reckless," Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, K Dictionaries Ltd., 2010, quoted in "Reckless," The Free Dictionary, Farlex, accessed December 8, 2021, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/ reckless.
5. "Reckless," Vocabulary.com, accessed December 8, 2021, https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reckless.
6. "News From Cory Asbury—Reckless Love.”