This is an excerpt from a blog written by an incredible young woman named Sheila.
"Having a relationship with an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful being who
doesn't talk back is really, really hard.
This post is to
summarize those things I do know about God. Some of them are things I know by
instinct; others I have to remind myself over and over again, because there's a
part of me that can't quite wrap my head around them. I find myself just
defaulting to Jerk-God because the real God is just too puzzling to
understand.
What do I know about God?
First, I know his
definition. He is the creator of all things. That is what most people mean
when they say "God." I tend to explain by saying that all things we know of in
this world have a temporal beginning and a cause. But we know, because the
universe is here at all, that something had to come behind all these causes --
something different, something that didn't have a temporal beginning or a
cause. . . .
And when I look at the created world, really look at it, I
feel like the person who made all these things is someone I would very much
like. I mean, think about it. He could have created us like the plants, just
needing some sunshine but never having to eat. But he made us able to bite into
a juicy steak or crunchy apple. We could have reproduced by budding, but he
gave us sex, pregnancy, birth -- things so weird and wonderful I sometimes
imagine the trouble I would have explaining them to aliens. He didn't paint
everything with a broad brush; every detail of creation is worked out perfectly,
so that no microscope can see the infinitesimally small but absolutely organized
structure of everything.
This comforts me more than anything. I know
that Jerk-God could never create this wonder. Jerk-God would have had the world
be so much less fun. Real God gave us a place we could really delight in,
because he wanted us to be happy.
Someone who would go to the
trouble of all that creating wasn't going to be happy just setting us on our way
and letting us go. He wanted to have an actual relationship with us. Now I
think we all know that it's impossible to have a real relationship that's forced
in any way. God made us able to say no to him. . . .
This God is someone who is awfully eager to get to know us.
. . .
I was struggling internally a few weeks ago with all this
when [her son] started singing to himself. He sang a song from Mr. Rogers: "It's
you I like, the way you are right now, way down deep inside you." I couldn't
help but think, "If Mr. Rogers can love me just the way I am, what kind of
person is God if he can't manage the same?"
It's hard to believe in
this. It is so, so hard to believe that at the same moment a person could know
everything about you, and I mean everything ... and at the same time love you.
It's hard to believe that there could be a person who couldn't deceive or be
deceived, who is pure unchanging truth ... and at the same time love
you.
We tend to pick one or the other, love OR truth. Either God lies
and says everything I do is a-okay and I never do anything wrong, in which case
he can love me, or he sees the reality of what I am and the people I've hurt and
the lies I've told, in which case he can't possibly love me. I think this is
one of the mysteries of God that we'll never fully understand, how he can see us
and our faults and still smile at us, the way I smile at my boys, and say, "I
love you just the way you are, not later when you've earned it, but right
now."
All of my spiritual life . . . has been a
process of trying to be worthy, to be good enough. I feel that God has made a
terrible mistake by loving me, and the only way to make it right is to try to be
good enough so it won't be such a mistake. . . .
. . . I want to be a better person because
everyone wants to be a better person, this is a good thing to do. But God isn't
my personal trainer. Sometimes he might want to talk about other stuff besides
how awful I am.
In fact, I think that, if he's anything like all the
other people who love me, he doesn't like hearing about how awful I am. Think
how you feel, if a person you love starts bashing themselves. You want to run
in and yell, "Don't talk that way about the person I love!" Why wouldn't God be
the same?
To understand God, I have to redefine my terms.
God
loves me.
Old definition: God tolerates me and gives me things for no
apparent reason, considering how much I suck.
New definition: God actually
likes me, enjoys being with me, and sees all the good in me.
God wants
me to be happy.
Old definition: I'd better do what God wants, even if it
makes me miserable, because if I don't things are going to be even worse.
New
definition: God wants me to be happy, and if I'm not, it isn't his doing. He
hates seeing me suffer, and though he can't always rush in to fix everything, he
really does care about my struggles.
. . .
If God is like
this, I really do want to know him. Not because I feel guilty that he loves me
so much and I've loved him so little in return. God can handle that. He
wouldn't have created mankind if he couldn't take a little rejection, and anyway
I actually do love God at least to some extent, so it's not like he's
actually getting rejected by me. The reason I want to get to know God is
because he seems like the sort of person I would like to know."
