This morning I awoke pondering the God revealed in Jesus as contrasted with the one in the Old Testament. The Old Testament God got angry. He demanded perfection, and people died if he didn’t like their behavior. He withheld his support if one didn’t behave.
At the same time, the Old Testament God was good and merciful. He was a protector. However, there is an underlying sense that one must earn that mercy and protection. There is a sense of a prosperity Gospel where worldly goods come to those who behaved the right way.
God sent his son into the world to right some of these misperceptions and partial truths. He sent Jesus to give us a glimpse into the unfathomable depths of God’s heart. In Jesus we see a God who is not a loving God, but a God who is love.
As I ponder the difference between loving and love, I see that God cannot be angry. He cannot be petty. He cannot use us or play with our hearts. He cannot withhold his gifts from us when we are bad. All he can do is give himself completely, and invite us into the joy of doing the same.
Why do so many see God differently? As I said above, I think the Old Testament view bleeds into our understanding of God. I think we project human behaviors onto God. We see him as Zeus who acted like a human with a lot of power. What happens when someone doesn’t respect our authority? We lash out. What happens when someone slights us? We respond in kind. However we ask and answer the question – “what would we do,” the answer is likely projected onto God.
Let’s look at this concept from the perspective of prayer. Jesus told us to ask and we would receive. What do we think when we don’t receive? We project our human ways onto God. We think we did something wrong or that something else is keeping God from being generous. When we read down a little further, Jesus says if a child asks for bread, the parent doesn’t give a stone. Maybe the answer is that we are praying for the equivalent of a stone, and he is trying to give us bread. Our God who is love wants to give us something better.
However, we tend to understand the something better from our human perception of good. When God looks at what we need, he sees our eternal good, not our worldly comfort and prosperity. He created us to live in union with him, to participate fully in an eternal exchange of love between the persons of the Most Holy Trinity as members of Christ’s body. In Christ we see this love as a full giving of self in order to receive the full giving of Himself. We give to receive.
I would suggest that life is about learning to live in this eternal exchange of love for eternity. It is about a personal choice to live a life of love in Christ; through Christ. It is about allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us all truth, to lead us to Christ, to learn to be one with Christ. It is a place to shed misunderstandings of God and to let him prune us of all that is not of him so that we can joyfully live in right relationship with him and each other. Our God isn’t just loving, but is love. He can only give us what is best for us; what is best for our eternal well-being.
I invite you to spend some time with the Holy Spirit pondering your view of God. Ask him to prune misperceptions, and to show you how to become one with God who is love. Thank him for all the love he pours into the world, and ask him to help you receive this love and to be this love.
In Him,
dw
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