At the age of 45, writer Regina Brett wrote a column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer listing 45 lessons that life had taught her thus far. As a breast cancer survivor, many of those lessons were learned the hard way. Five years later she added five more lessons rounding her list up to 50 and turned her popular list into a book called God Never Blinks. I found her list to be entertaining, inspiring and thought provoking. I thought I would go through each of her lessons learned and write about how that lesson has or has not come up in my own life, now that I am 40 and feel old enough to have finally learned something.
"God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do."
~ LESSON #34
Is this why you can confess your sins and be forgiven like a get out of jail free card in Monopoly? That simple? Because God inherently loves us all? He/She can't help it? Because we are all His/Her children? Just like a parent loves their child, even if they do something terrible? God loves the human, not the deeds. And that is why He/She can forgive so easily when we confess those sins?
I'm not a formal religious person. I go to different faith's services with interest and questions about why they do things the way they do. I have my own set of beliefs about a personal faith drawn from all kinds of religions and also secular ideas.
Is this lesson saying that God loves even the bad people or that God loves all well-intended people who make wrong choices because of His/Her capacity for forgiveness and caring nature? And the evil people are not loved? God hates them?
I don't get it. Maybe you can translate for me. I do know this. God doesn't love one set of athletes over another when they are competing. So when they win the game, they can thank their parents for helping them grow to success - not God.
4 comments:
I have neighbors (formerly friends) who are a certain religion that believes THEY are the only people going to heaven so they don't like to fraternize with us. Really? Do you really call yourself a Christian and judge like that? Ugh. They don't get it. I don't get them, so I'm done with that crap.
I think that whatever gets you to be a better person is the religion for me. Most days I get more from my Dalai Lama calendar than I do from any 4 walls on a Sunday morning.
It's the 'because of who God is' that's a bit confusing to me. It's a tall order to know exactly who God is.
We don't necessarily share the same religious views, but that's one of the things I love most about the blogosphere - the chance to know a wide variety of people and maintain friendships in spite of varying opinions. But, I will agree with you on one thing - the athletes who make a show of praising God when they do well. Not that I personally think that's a bad thing, but I always wonder if they do the same when things don't go their way?
The easiest (and probably most "accurate") answer is that we can't understand the mind of God, and that if we could, we'd be gods ourselves.
That's not a particularly satisfying answer, though. there are belief systems that all you have to do is confess, and all will be forgiven. Personally, I think you have to repent. That is, your regret has to be genuine, and you have to resolve to make it right and not repeat your mistake. But I also think all forgiveness comes with that price.
Anyway, that's the truncated blog comment version. You're talking about questions without definite answers, and a debate that's centuries old. The best any of us can do is the best we can.
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