This may seem like a weird question but pause and think about it for a minute, do you know how much God loves you? I have struggled for a while with how some churches choose to engage people with God. Some use guilt, others fear and some use incentives; if you do "x" your blessings will be "y." As I have studied and grown in my faith these different approaches have never resonated with the God that I know and have grown to know and trust. Now Lutherans are often criticized for focusing too much on grace and I agree with most of those criticisms. Too often we use grace as a "get out of jail free card" and that is not what God is about either. The love that God has for us is beyond our comprehension. In the original language of the New Testament the word that is used to describe God's love is defined using words like unconditional, perfect, unending and pure. Now, if we truly understand God's love for us I believe that we would be radically transformed by that love. We would be so blown-away that someone or something could love us so much we would want to do our best to live a life that does its best to reflect such a love. Do you know how much God loves you? I want to help us all understand that question, I want to begin a journey with you to figure out how that love can transform us and I want to help us all open up to accept a love like that, because, I think the most difficult part of this relationship is allowing ourselves to be loved. Do you know how much God loves you? Let's figure that one out together.
See you Sunday.
Pastor Chris
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No, I don't know and I would guess that most people don't know. The key for me is that as humans, we understand such things as love primarily by experience: our parents care for us, and so we learn that they "love" us. And when we are adults - hopefully - we meet someone who does things to us and for us that we translate into "love." It is difficult to see how God loves ME or even cares about me when I don't have the stimuli or experiences of feeling or seeing or sensing that love. It is much the same with the common phrase that "God is our best friend." Really? How does one understand that concept, when he doesn't respond as a friend would, he doesn't interact as friends do. Now, don't go saying that that's why he is our BEST friend, because he is so much more than any human friend could ever be! To me, that is a circular argument: if I am unable to see God as my friend, then how can I ever understand the idea that he is a better friend to me than any of my human friends? Yes, I suppose I'm waiting for a burning bush, but in my opinion, most people are doing the same. Or they've just given up and don't even think about anymore. I think about it all the time and pray and fuss and cry and pray some more...no bush. Not even a twig. I never would have expected that as I grew older, that God would become LESS real for me, but that is what has happened. I suspect it is the same for many members of CLC. For me, the most difficult part of all this is not that I will not allow myself to be loved. It is, rather, the obvious lack of understanding of what God's love looks like, feels like, IS like.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote a beautiful, heart-felt blog and I appreciate it. I would also appreciate a response, as I often feel that the lack of responses to our comments is one of the reasons more comments are not posted! Again, my opinion, for what it's worth...
Anonymous, great comments and insights. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone says they are in love I always find it interesting when someone asks them to explain it to them. Should we have to explain love? I agree with you that love is something we experience and an experience is something that is beyond description. Sure you could describe what it was like to ride a roller coaster but wouldnt it be much better just to ride one? That is how I look at God's love. We can do out best to describe it, explain it, etc but really I believe God wants us to experience it. That leads to the million dollar question of how do we experience God's love?
I think we have done "love" a great disservice in our cultural and I think that disservice has negatively impacted how we understand how God reveals his love for us. If we look at our faith as a relationship and I am struggling to sense God's love in my life the first thing I do personally is look at the health of my relationship with God and more often then not when I am feeling out of touch I have not cared for that relationship the way that it needs to be cared for and I hope that if I do care for it that sense of connection will return.
Thanks again for taking the time to write. I hope my thoughts have helped and I hope we can continue this journey together.
Chris Hermansen
Chris, Thank you for responding so thoughtfully. However, I think there is a mighty gap between your first and second paragraphs: you finish the first by asking the "million dollar question" then you veer off that path a bit. I believe you thought you were answering your own question, but you are still saying - I think - that we must look at the relationship we have with God and determine where we have failed, try to do better, and then hope that God will again reveal himself to us in some way. The "sense of connection" you refer to: is that what you mean by the feeling that God loves us? If this is true, then why bother? If we don't feel any "connection" after our attempts to do better, than have we not done enough, not the right things, or is God so mad at us he isn't responding?
ReplyDeleteYou say that God wants us to experience his love for us, and what I was saying in my comments was that just doesn't happen for many of us. We desperately want it to and feel very strongly that something is missing in our lives. So the answer doesn't seem to be that we need to look at our relationship with God and determine where we have fallen down. There has to be something else, doesn't there?
Those "theologians" who claim to be talked to by God: are they lying, or just delusional? Does God love some more than others, so he gives them better lives or good things to reward them? The Bible seems to support that idea to a degree, right?
There must be a good reason why the non-denominational/conservative branches of Christianity are growing, while we mainliners are losing members, and I think it is dangerous not to consider that there are members of CLC that do not think the same way that you do about God and his love. It is not a good thing that I feel this way, and it makes me quite uncomfortable to write this, even anonymously. I truly want to feel that God loves me in a way that I have never felt loved before. I want to believe, but the more I think about this, the less sure I am...