In my previous posting, I began by quoting a Facebook status comment from one of my Facebook friends: “Everybody sins & God loves everybody. No exceptions. How come people like to separate the clauses?” After sharing some thoughts last week about the phrase, “everybody sins,” this week I want to explore some things about “God loves everybody.”
When I was in high school, someone gave me a small white plastic plaque with bold gold letters. It read: Smile! God loves you! I kept it on the dresser in my bedroom. Each morning, I’d see it and I’d smile. I didn’t really think about it. I just associated God’s love with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
The topic of God’s love sounds so simple as to be trite. Yet, it’s a very challenging concept to consider. The first challenge is articulating an understanding of God. If that weren’t difficult enough, there’s also the challenge to articulate an understanding of love. While I mean no disrespect to the poets and theologians of the ages who have attempted to convey something about both God and love, in a few paragraphs, I want to share some of my recent thoughts.
As someone grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I affirm an understanding of God as creator of the cosmos. As conveyed in the Hebraic stories of the book of Genesis, God created the heavens and earth while also making humanity in the divine image. George Bernard Scott once said, “God made man in his own image, and ever since we’ve been trying to return the favor.” The greatest challenge we have in discussing God is that we speak of God as though the Divine were human. We use metaphoric images to describe the Divine: a father, a ruler, a judge, a mother, a lover, and so forth. We speak as though the deity has human attributes like gender, personality, intellect, and emotion. Yet, God is not a person, does not have gender, is neither old nor young, neither tall nor short, neither spirit nor matter. The Biblical texts speak most clearly when the voice of the Divine says cryptically, “I AM.” Anything further than this statement leads to metaphors rooted in the experience of being human.
I believe, but have no proof, that this I AM is creator and sustainer of the cosmos and this universe. If physicists are correct that parallel universes exist, the multiverse would also be part of the creative and sustaining energy of Divinity. To the degree that there is a unifying principle among the myriad forms of life that exist, the unifying principle would somehow be the Divine.
I also believe when I sit in deep meditation or contemplative prayer, my experience of self-transcendence opens me to encounter something of the Divine. Over the years, I have become at-home in that experience but I also know that the experience can be challenging and difficult as well as comforting and renewing.
Ultimately, when I consider what I am able to articulate about my belief in the Divine with any amount of clarity, I am able to say very few things. While I use many metaphors for the Divine, I affirm that the Divine is beyond my comprehension.
In a similar way, even after being the recipient of love from others all of my life, including my family, my spouse, my friends, and those whom I may not have recognized looked at me with love, I cannot say exactly what it is. I’ve read books on love by people like Plato, Erik Fromm, Josef Pieper, but the reception of love from another is also beyond my comprehension and, yes, I must admit, seems often underserved. Perhaps what makes it love is that this commitment of heartfelt affection is offered despite all of our shortcomings, idiosyncrasies, and limitations. Yet, each of us has been, is, and will be loved by others.
Today, as an adult, for me to affirm that God loves everyone is to affirm simple yet significant things about life as we know it in our era: that our lives are part of the amazing web of life throughout the cosmos; that through this web of cosmic life, we have been brought into existence; that we have been given all that we will ever need to not only be alive but to thrive and grow and actualize all that it means to be human. To use anthropomorphic terms, God has given birth to us, sustains us with many gifts, and offers us hope for the future. Isn’t that what a good parent does for a child? Yet, the Divine can’t be limited to our understanding of a parent nor can God’s love be reduced to the care parents provide their children. It’s all much larger than our metaphors.
Yet, each morning I sit in silent meditation and touch some small part of this grand mystery that I have come to know as the Divine who is present to me out of love. I recognize that my life is often out of balance. By allowing my attention to focus in silence on this great mystery, a sense of balance becomes possible once again. In this way, the reality of sin (imbalance) does not pull me further off center because God’s love restores me to a balanced integration in that moment. Or, as my Facebook friend said one day, perhaps as a quip: “Everybody sins & God loves everybody. No exceptions. How come people like to separate the clauses?”