Chapter 11: Love, Rest, and Play
1 day ago
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
All are in God's Family
Without getting into all the theology and resultant proof texting from "sacred" texts I think God sees all of humanity as His children. God gives us all life, sustains that life force and knows the best and worst about us and yet loves us far more than we earthly parents love our children and grandchildren.
If "God" cannot love us unconditionally while knowing our worst failures then such a "God" only deserves our disdain.
For some reason we cling to the one action that Adam & Eve did in one of the creation stories to cause us to think we are repulsive to God and ignore the life, teachings and supreme examples of love that Jesus (and others) accomplished to demonstrate how much God loves us. We don the filthy diapers of religion, systems, institutions, programs, piety and self-righteousness to hide our nakedness because we think we are too unlovable and unacceptable to live in the affection of God.
We are so wrong.
He created us to love us. He did not create us to demonstrate His superior morality, purity and power. He does not insist we attain a certain level of good behavior or discover and adopt correct thinking in order to gain His favor. In a thousand ways, through people and nature, God reaches out to us showing us His tender affections. Mostly we flee from those ministrations and even go as far as to suggest to other people that they must also behave or think a certain way in order to be worthy of love and acceptence.
Virtually all of our religions simply cannot comprehend such an amazing love so we reject that love or minimize it or add terms and conditions. We turn God's pure and unconditional love for us into rules, rituals and religion. Then, based on our flawed but attempted adherence to manmade rules, we define ourselves as included in God's family and define all others and excluded and outside of God's family.
Often we hear that God never changes, but proponents of a God who is angry and bent on punishment pick a time somewhere in the Old Testament when it appears that God was smiting and spreading pestilence. That vengeful, jealous "God", they say, is the God who never changes. I say the God who never changes is the one spoken of in Ephesians 1. From The Message,
He created us to love us. He did not create us to demonstrate His superior morality, purity and power. He does not insist we attain a certain level of good behavior or discover and adopt correct thinking in order to gain His favor. In a thousand ways, through people and nature, God reaches out to us showing us His tender affections. Mostly we flee from those ministrations and even go as far as to suggest to other people that they must also behave or think a certain way in order to be worthy of love and acceptence.
Virtually all of our religions simply cannot comprehend such an amazing love so we reject that love or minimize it or add terms and conditions. We turn God's pure and unconditional love for us into rules, rituals and religion. Then, based on our flawed but attempted adherence to manmade rules, we define ourselves as included in God's family and define all others and excluded and outside of God's family.
Often we hear that God never changes, but proponents of a God who is angry and bent on punishment pick a time somewhere in the Old Testament when it appears that God was smiting and spreading pestilence. That vengeful, jealous "God", they say, is the God who never changes. I say the God who never changes is the one spoken of in Ephesians 1. From The Message,
"Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family"
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