“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – and to see takes time like having a friend takes time.”
Georgia O’Keefe
Many contradictory images of the Sacred exist in our culture, presenting many possible faces of God to the world. Some, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, stand silently holding up their Watchtower magazines in the hope that you’ll be interested. Others carry signs or wear placards, filled with homespun theology in hand lettering.
And then there are the screamers. Sometimes with an open Bible in their hands, at other times with nothing more than an accusing finger pointed at the passersby, the screaming evangelists holler at the people on the sidewalk about hell and damnation and the certainty of the wrath of God. And even though no one seems to notice, I always wonder what kind of subconscious imprinting we are all getting about the idea that God is wrathful and enraged.
It’s not just the sidewalk preachers. Televangelists, authors, pastors, revival leaders, and many other figures in our world seem to emphasize God’s fury and anger. Especially in the south where the combination of poverty and conservative evangelicalism has created a grim world here and a more grim world to come, the possibility of God as unloving seems all too real.
Of course, the wrathful God is by no means the only image of God we have. Jesus spoke lovingly of God as ‘daddy,’ the adoring parent who yearns to give good things to his children. Julian of Norwich rounded out that image by proclaiming the motherhood of the Sacred in a book filled with poetic insights into the nature of Divine love. The New Testament author who wrote the Letters of John said it most simply: “God is Love.” (First John 4).
I am convinced that we can choose which image of God, and which theology — in other words, which way of talking about God — seems the most true and right to us. To choose the wrathful and angry God is to choose a world where obedience and placating are the supreme virtues, where the job of human beings is to be docile and submissive. Unfortunately, such a choice not only is psychologically crippling to individuals, but it also creates the kind of world where the abuse of power can take place, whether the abuser is a despotic political leader, a money-hungry pastor, or a controlling parent. I find it hard to believe that a good God would want to relate to us in such a life-diminishing way.
The other choice is to believe in the love of God, despite the haranguing of conservative religion and despite the fears and anxieties that sometimes overwhelm life. To choose belief in a loving God is to choose a world where intimacy and celebration are the supreme virtues, where the purpose of human life is to live fully, creatively, and compassionately. This choice is psychologically liberating, for a loving God is a God who celebrates our ability to make wise choices (even if God does not “let us off the hook” when we make poor choices — another sign of love, incidentally!). Furthermore, if God loves me and you, then God loves all people, which means that a loving God is a God who takes a radical stand for peacemaking, nonviolence, social and economic justice, and dignity for all persons, regardless of race, gender, creed, or sexual orientation.
So how can I be sure God loves me? Choose to encounter the Divine Love, and you will soon be overwhelmed by the evidence of Him in your life. You’ll see the love of God in the sunrise and the sunset, in the eyes of babies and old people and homeless people and loved ones, in the playfulness of children and pets and the seriousness of people everywhere trying to make a better world. Say “I believe in the love of God” today, and every day, and soon the day will come when you wonder how you ever could have doubted!
Last of all… the surest way to find the love of God is to choose to love God. Give your heart to the source of love and light at the center of all things. Give your ability to love to the silent presence who watches you and accepts you no matter how “good” or “bad” you are. Open yourself up to the mystery of existence that extends before birth and beyond death. Relationships, after all, are mutual matters, and to the extent I open myself up to love God, to that same extent I open myself to receive Divine love. As Meister Eckhart said, “The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.” What goes for the eye goes for the heart.
The heart with which I love God is the heart with which God loves me.
peace, dwight
