Love of God

(More unoriginality from the drafts pile.)

We had a rousing discussion on the way to church yesterday. It centered around the idea of a meddlesome God. And I tried to explain that the sort of love that is authoritarian, one that will trip you for your own good is a dangerous God to get involved with. Also, a God that makes everything for a reason, and that reason being to bring us back to Him is also a dangerous God to get involved with.

Or perhaps not, perhaps the danger is thinking we can accurately interpret God's intention with whatever happens in this life. I think that is a very short path to hubris. And evil. People refuse to grasp how much power they possess, because they think being powerful is synonymous with being evil. But if you do not own your power and responsibility for making Heaven in the Incarnation, then you are, actually being evil.

Things left undone are probably the worst sins of all.


God does not make suffering so that we can be better people. Suffering is the result of the fall - the corporate and even individual sins of humanity. To say that God created a hurricane so that people would suffer and be better for it is completely wrong - that is hardly loving? But to say that hurricanes happen because of the activity of the world necessary to sustain life on a planet is totally accurate. To say that within the entire event of a hurricane - where the action of wind and weather meets the human response, we find God in the response. If a hurrican is from God, then the response of humans towards other humans is the opportunity to act as God towards each other, to show the love of God towards each other, to see God, Jesus if you will, in the suffering that comes out of it.

I do not ascribe to a vengeful God. I think that a vengeful God is our projection onto God, and yes, I believe that lots of what is in the bible is our projection. Humans wrote the thing in response to God - because seriously, why would God write such tripe and nonsense as we find in the bible.