It’s unfortunate that, on a binary, either you are a “conservative” and thus believe that God relates to humanity as Law prior to Love; or that you are a “progressive,” and thus that God only relates to humanity as Love (which entails, that God stands with the other, so-called, in a purely affirming way—in this instance I’m thinking of so-called Gay Christianity and LGBTQ in general).
And yet it is possible, and I believe, required, to think God as triune Love, and yet a God of holiness who contradicts all of our righteousnesses; whether that be left, right, or in between somewhere. God’s life and act of love doesn’t allow us to stay where He finds us—tossed off into the brambles of the ditch in our mother’s afterbirth—but He picks us up, cleans us up, in His holiness, and sets us next to Him, as the Bride of His Son. He calls us to deny whatever we are predisposed to—that is, whatever base desires that reign prevalent in our lives, whatever those might be—and to live a life in participation with His, through union with Christ. A life that continuously burns away what we take to be okay and good and righteous, and instead clothes us with His robes of righteousness, wherein freedom for Him, and thus others abounds.
I am one of those who sees God as inherently loving and gracious. But at the same time believes that entails a Fatherly contradiction to what we, left to our own sinful natures, would project onto Him; as if He is simply there to affirm us in whatever we believe is the good way. God’s Law, as the Apostle Paul states, is the Law of Christ. Which is to say, that God is love; with all of the weight, contradiction, and transformation that comes with. As a consequence, we ought to expand beyond the secular social imaginaries we inhabit, and repose in what God has eternally imagined for us in participation with the Son of His bosom forevermore. First and foremost, it is to live a life of Godly love wherein His holiness, rather than “ours,” is the centerpiece.