GOD IS KIND, BUT...

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind.

This will be my last post about, “Love is kind.”

 I have no illusions about the world. Anyone who knows anything about human history knows what wretched murderers human beings are. Pick any age when humans lived, and we find there is no time in this country, or any country, where people were living as if God’s kingdom on earth is coming.

In most recent history, Israel is blowing up U.N. safe havens, Palestinians are sending rockets into cities, and Syria, having murdered thousands of its citizens, continues to murder more.

Children, right now, are fleeing their countries for fear of being murdered.  They escape into a country whose citizens’ faces are contorted with hate, whose voices scream hate, and whose hearts reveal to the world such vile hatred that is ever nigh and ever possible in our nation.

With all of this as we live now, on this day, we cannot have any illusions about kindness.

So why?  Why even think that God is love; love is kind; therefore, God is kind?

The reason is simple. The kingdom of God is coming as long as we Christians bring it to the world. I do not have to love or believe in love, but I do. It makes sense to me.

It makes sense to me that someone, even if I am the only one in the world, someone must love. When there are people seeking refuge, the reality of this world should always be that Christians are that one group of people they need never fear.

Indeed, Christians are that one group of people who love them more than they love themselves, more than they love God, more than their country loves them, and always more than hate filled humanity loathes them.

Love is no passion. It is no feeling. It is a discipline. It is a choice. We choose each and every time to forgive, to love.

We love each and every time:  seventy-seven times or four hundred ninety times.

In our lives the kind deed count begins and ends with that grace of our God of love which compels us to love as God loves. Love happens when we refuse to hate by the grace of our God of love that permeates within us from every atom of our being as we live in the ground of all being.

Whether we like it or not, wish it or not, regret it or not, we must refuse to hate or harm our fellow humanity.

Kindness is slower than bullets. Kind words penetrate faster and lodge deeper than invectives.

                               

Yesterday, during a conference for new teachers, a presenter asked if there were any Christians in the room. Just about everybody raised their hand, including myself. Then, she asked if there were any Muslims. Two people raised their hands:  one woman, wearing a hijab, and I.

When I went to Central Office today to receive my ID badge, I stood in line for a few minutes. Suddenly, there she was standing behind me, her countenance radiating such kindness and sweetness within her lovely hijab.

I started a conversation with her, small talk for the most part, but she kept the conversation going. She was delightful.

I did not ask her about her faith or try to share my faith, but I did tell her that I had raised my hand with her yesterday. She was surprised. When she asked why, I said, that I was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who numbered himself among all peoples of faith.

The Greek word that’s translated “kind” is chresteuomai. It means “beneficial,” “gentle,” and “being of service to others.”  The Latin Vulgate translated the word into “benigna,” from which we get our word “benign.” 

Someone needs to show people that they may know us by our love. I will do it by God even if it kills me.

Why?  The answer is simple:  we better start showing our faith or it will not last another millennium. It may not last another century.

And that would be a tragedy for on paper and in a real life, such as we’ve seen in Christ, kindness is beautiful.

So, my brothers and sisters, emulate our God of love. Be kind. If you screw it up. Don’t despair. Just do better as many next times as you can.

Blessings…

RAIN! RAIN! GO NOT AWAY!

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about rain.

It’s a pouring rain pounding Savannah this morning.  I had to go out in it.  I was forced to go because my wife, blessed be she, was fussing about a document left in the car, and I groused about it, but when she said she would go get it, I knew I had to go. 

And go did I with an umbrella.  I have the wet spots on my shirt and in my hair to prove it. As it turned out, I could not find it.  My wife gave me her vague directions.

“It’s on the passenger seat.”

I looked “on the passenger seat,” and below the passenger seat, around the passenger seat, atop the passenger seat, the back seat on the passenger seat side, and for some strange reason, in the trunk too.

Meanwhile, as the rain pounded Savannah, it pummeled my umbrella, switched my back and legs, and stomped on my feet.

When I returned, I learned she meant under the sun visor near the passenger seat.  I did not think to look there.

Hey!  I slept on pain medicine, which I hate, and woke up with several bales of cotton suffered inside my brain.

As it turned out I did not need that paperwork for what I wanted to do.  All I needed was the username and password that I had written on that paperwork and into my cotton stuffed brain.  Unfortunately, when I had pushed enough cotton aside to realize it, the rain had already got me.

Oh, but the sound of it and the feeling of excitement from it has melted a lot of the cotton away.  I wanted to do what I had done during many other rainy days of yore and that was to run out into it on a field, and run run run! Then slide slide slide on the grass with the water sopping up over me as my belly and chest smacked and raced over soaked earth.

My brothers and sisters did that a lot in the yard when we were kids.  Umbrellas were only for spinning or tossing up into the air to see if they would fall from the sky as if Mary Poppins held them.

This sort of meditation comes to mind when I meditate on the words, “God saw all that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” 

Blessings…

LIFE AS KINDA KIND

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind even though unkind things happen in a lifetime.

When I was fourteen years old, my sister ran away from home. She was twelve. She was gone for three days before we learned what happened to her.

Somehow she and my cousin snuck out of their houses. Another person drove them to the bus station in Chattanooga. They took a bus to Knoxville.

When they arrived, she and my cousin decided to come back to Chattanooga. They called a friend to pick them up and take them back. He did, but an hour and a half away from his home or two hours away from her home, the driver fell asleep and slammed into a telephone pole.

My sister did not wear her seat belt. She crashed through the windshield and died. My cousin broke her hip. The driver broke his ankle. Another passenger was unhurt.

That is the official version of my sister’s death.

What did they plan to do in Knoxville?  Were they just being silly and bold?  Did they go there just so they could say they traveled all that way?  Was there someone there who had offered to let them stay for a party, or for a longer time, and then they would go home?  How much money did they have?  Was it enough for a hotel room?

Another thing to consider is when they ran away. They weren’t just running away from home. They were also running away from school. The last week in March was the last week I saw my sister alive.

I never found out the details of what happened. I never heard talk about a plan. I loved my sister dearly, but I was angry with her for disrupting our lives the way she did.

Some might say my sister was being punished for running away. My grandfather, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher, certainly thought that way.

I was fourteen when my sister died. I never believed she was punished. It did not make sense. My cousin wasn’t killed. I never found out what happened to the driver or the other passenger.

Now, my grandmother, as saintly a woman as any one might know, did not die suddenly nor did she die within surrounding circumstances that suggested her death may have resulted from wrong choices.

My grandmother died slowly, horribly from Alzheimer’s disease. For the last three years of her life she knew nobody. She literally wasted away. Her suffering ended either the moment consciousness eluded her forever, although her body continued to live, or the moment she drew her last breath.

All the prayers in the world cannot turn back Alzheimer’s disease. It is a dreadful malignancy. It changes the soul before it steals it away.

I believe the more we understand the brain, the sooner Uncle Al can be dispatched. When that happens, we can pray for God to cure someone with greater confidence that it will happen.

Once that mind eater is muzzled, we will have entered a whole new realm of experiencing kindness during our lives.

Blessings…

SUDDEN DEATH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about cardiac arrests.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning with my jaw hurting severely again. It’s nearly 5:00 A.M. now, and I can’t sleep even though I took an Ibuprofen and some hydrocodone. I took the latter after half an hour when it became apparent the former was not going to do the trick.

The hydrocodone is doing a different trick. It is keeping me awake all night.

Sometimes, we just have to endure misery. There’s nothing we can do about it. 

I prayed.  Of course, I prayed.  "Oh Jesus Lord have mercy this hurts!  Help me!"

I prayed, just like any sane person would, but the pain persists.

I would have been happy if the pain departed. I would have attributed it to God in some complicated, arcane way…gladly. 

However, I know from experience that God does not truck with breaking natural law. God created natural law. Unlike politicians, God would never break it.

So, I think I’ll do what I normally do. I’ll go to the gym. I’ll post this to my blog. I’ll eat breakfast and drink coffee. I just won’t be jolly old Saint Bill since it hurts like heck to smile and to not smile.

My wife believes my jaw pain may be a cardiac symptom. Tim Russert died suddenly of a cardiac arrest. She is fearful that may be my fate.

Wow. If I dropped dead, what a bummer that would be for some people. It would be a bummer for my wife. She has worked so hard to help me get my classroom ready. She has been so happy about my new job. She loves me very much, but I would be gone. I would not want to be her.

It would be a bummer for my Aunt Nay too. She would worry about my wife. She loves me too so I know it would hurt. I would not want to be her.

It would be a bummer for my best friend, John. It would make him feel older. Also, he would have one less buddy to sit up with all night, drinking bourbon, and figuring out at long last what the word “God” means and why Jesus did what he did. I would not want to be him either.

It would be a bummer for my siblings. They would feel some guilt for not knowing me, or for not trying to know me a little more. I know. I will feel the same when either of them die. I would hate to be them.

It would be a bummer for my step daughters. They, like Aunt Nay, would worry about their mother. Both of them are so busy right now. This is an important time in their emerging careers. A death in the family is the last thing they need. I would not want to be them.

Finally, I would not want to be me. What a drag. I have so much to do and accomplish still. I love my wife very much too. I need a lifetime to start knowing her as much as I want. I will need a few more to complete the examination. It wouldn't be fair if that ended suddenly right now. 

I am happy to report that I am not having a cardiac event. It’s simply a wild tooth gone bad. I know that for certain now. I shook the darn thing. It felt loose, and it hollered at me. It’s still grumbling like a kid sitting out of recess.

So here I am. I can’t sleep. I have a busy day ahead of me today. It’s a new job and all that goes with that.

At least, I’m seeing the dentist this morning. I have to jump through that hoop before I go to the one who deadens the nerve and seeks to save the tooth.

Hmmm…  There’s got to be a metaphor about salvation in that.

Blessings…

KINDESS IN PEOPLE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind.

I have been reflecting on God as love and applying that to 1 Corinthians 13.  I began with, "Love is kind."

It has been said and preached that we are God’s hands, eyes, and mouths. Through us, God is kind to all the world.

The smallest kindnesses add up. 

Thanking your wife out of the blue for making you happy, telling the person who put together a new teacher conference what a wonderful job she did, getting up from a table to get a drink of water and asking a stranger sitting there if there is anything they need you to bring back for them, ponying up for someone who is short at the cash register, telling a kid you’re happy to see him or her, waving and smiling at old folks, talking to old folks and listening to them, telling the person pushing grocery carts into a store that you notice how hard they work when you shop there, texting your children out of the blue and telling them that you miss them and you look forward to seeing them soon, telling our God of love that you love the goodness in God and the goodness in the world that looks very much like it and you want the world to see that goodness in you.

The kindness of God is known through us. God is love. Love is kind indeed when we are kind.

John Wesley wrote, “Do all the good you can, all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can.”

Truly being kind is the same as being good. I'll shout out an “amen” to that.

Blessings…

Pain

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let’s think about sheer agony.

My jaw has been hurting me the past few days. Last night, I was in such great pain all I wanted to do was knock myself out with a pill.

The fundamentalist homunculus who lives inside my head, a Deuteronomist if there ever was one, whispered the pain was sent by our God of love to punish me. Rubbish!

I thought of C. S. Lewis who said pain reminds us of God’s presence. I doubt very seriously I need to be reminded of something I think about as often as I think about sex…you know…every seven seconds according to research.

Truly, I think of God more than that. I’ve never timed it though. That would be like looking at an electron wouldn’t it?

No, pain happens because we have nerve endings. For me, right now, it’s either a tooth or a gum infection. I know this because it flares up as I am eating and for a long time afterwards. 

God gives the strength and the wisdom to deal with pain. All of us who are Christians believe that, don’t we?  How does God do that? 

Here’s how:  through millions of years of evolution our bodies have developed minds that tell us when we are hurting that we must avoid what causes us to hurt, or medicate ourselves, or endure the pain until such a time comes that we are better from it.

In other words, God gave us the wisdom to take a pill and go see a dentist. It really is that simple. We don’t have to be an atheists to do that. 

Indeed, I am a better man for knowing it.

And now I thank medical science. We are all deeply in debt to medical science. I am tempted to say that God is deeply in debt to medical science because God’s healing rate has significantly increased since the discovery of the germ theory and the technology devised to treat its effects.

But God evolved creatures who, after centuries of magical thinking, discovered the natural causes of diseases and natural ways to treat them.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Lord.

Blessings…

THE BLOG AND GOD LANGUAGE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about my hopes for this blog, and I’ll say a quick word about language.

Starting today, I hope to post twice a day. That might be an overly ambitious goal for me since I start a new job today, but I hope not.

In the morning, I hope to write about where God is throughout the gimcrackery and finery of the world. In the evening, I hope to write about God. So my second post will be more theological.

I have been struggling about whether or not to comment upon the issues of the day. I suspect I cannot keep quiet about that, so when I do I will attempt to be apologetic, that is, keeping naysayers and yea-sayers honest about God when they are speaking about god.

That’s what apologetics are:  stepping up and making a defense for God. If Christianity is going to continue another millennium, or everlastingly as I would hope, then we must speak up wisely.

I may be polemical. I suspect at least that much. I shall try not to disrespect anyone, but I can’t promise that I won’t ridicule stupid ideas, howbeit in a kind and funny way. That’s a good thing. I really would like to make my readers laugh a lot.

I should be liquid like a creek. I am not interested in dwelling on one or two issues.

I will be analytical. I will call attention to the way ideas are expressed. I’m pretty good at that.

So, to sum up, twice a day I hope to post. In the morning this blog will be more spontaneous and in the evening it will be more theological.

Now, let us think about god language.

Jack Kingston lost his primary bid to be the Republican candidate for the senate seat once held by Saxby Chambliss.

In the newspaper today, it was reported that he said he would be waiting for the Lord to open another door of opportunity for him.

Now, I am a Baptist. I would be a whole lot happier if politicians did not mention God at all except in an Abraham Lincoln kind of way. Even that is a bit troublesome.

If you give a religious person an inch in the political world, he or she will take the state. If you give him or her a foot, he or she will take the country. So I get a little twitchy when a god is invoked by a politician.

The language of god opening a door is a cliché among fundamentalists. It points to opportunity knocking, another cliché, and any of us opening the door.

That cliché did not enter my mind this morning as I perambulated, but it should have. My mind felt uplifted, and the feeling radiated out of my chest and tingled throughout my arms as I pondered the new job I begin today.

I am a high school English teacher again. I will be teaching again and going to football games again and basketball games again and baseball games again and pep rallies again and school concerts again and and and and…

I am excited fit to be swatted with a yard stick across my butt. For three years in this town, only three interviews came my way. That was because I started looking during the recession.

This year, English teachers left their positions in droves. I got calls for three interviews. I actually chose between two offers. God did not so much open the door as raise the entire wall.

Now, I’m not convinced that God actually goes to the trouble of making things happen. All that is resides and happens in God, and God’s fingerprints may well be all over everything, but my life unfolds in accordance with natural and social laws and patterns.

I got the job because of two things.

Persistence won the day. I did not get discouraged and quit. I kept looking.

Also, the right time, what the Greeks called kairos, eventually came around. We must wait and be ready for it.

The only direct hand in this new good fortune for me would be my wife’s. She checked the web site for jobs daily. She and her friends kept other friends throughout the district aware of my situation. One principal, the one whose job I accepted, already knew of me before I interviewed with her, and she wanted me at her school. I have my wife to thank for that.

Of course, our God of love is working where there is love. The door that has opened for me did so the way our God of love opens doors…through the love and effort of another.

I number myself among the fortunate husbands.

Blessings…

HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about Simon the Leper.

He’s only mentioned once in the Bible, in Mark 14: 3 and, since Matthew often uses Mark to make his gospel, Matthew 26:6.

The only thing in the Bible said of Simon the leper is about his home which is the place where Jesus visited the Wednesday before Passover.

That’s it. He’s nearly as unknown as the woman in the same passage who suddenly appears and anoints Jesus’ head with very expensive perfume.

Simon opened his home up to Jesus as a friend. The passage does not tell us if he was present. Nor does it tell us if he were healed. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible tells us that presumably he was healed, maybe by Jesus.

What if he wasn’t?  What if Jesus’ acceptance of those who by nature had violated purity laws caused Simon to accept himself?  He decided to stay in his home rather than exile himself into a leper colony.

Truly, however, we know nothing about his circumstances. What we do know is that Jesus did not scorn or reject this man whose disease would have caused society to scorn and reject him.

Simon offered his home as a friend. The woman with no name offered an incredible gift of love to Jesus.

Again, we have no details about this woman. Was she, like Simon, an outcast because her condition caused her to ever be in violation of purity laws? 

I don’t know. Jesus must have been or done something truly loving for her to respond to him in kind the way she did.

This leper and this unknown woman are examples of people whom Jesus loved. We must do likewise.

Blessings…

KINDNESS IN CREATION

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind.

I have been reflecting on God as love expressed in 1 Corinthians 13.

I wrote last time about the beauty in creation and how it can be perceived as a kindness.

For centuries people believed the earth and sky were created for them. Although we do not believe that any more, there is a way of experiencing the world that inspires poetry, that is revelatory, that acts upon us like a kindness.

Before, I wrote about kindness that occurs incidentally in creation. That is the kindness we perceive as we go throughout our day:  the deer bounding through the lawn, the squirrel nibbling on an acorn in a position that looks very much like prayer, the flight of pelicans over the sea, the bobbing heads of dolphins in the distant horizon, sunrises, sunsets, a storm approaching over a valley or an ocean, and other things of that nature. Through the course of our lives, as we breathe and move, the glory of creation touches us with grace.

Another kind of kindness would be what we seek. For instance, when we travel for a vacation or go on a retreat.

Once I pedaled my bicycle from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Bonham, Texas. The plan was to ride to San Francisco before my seminary classes started in September. I departed Chattanooga in May.

With five books, a camera, binoculars, a Sony Walkman, a radio that covered my ears like muffs, a journal, some pens, a tent, and normal riding gear I weighed more than my poor knees could handle after the first weekend. So I stood in front of a store and gave everything away except my Bible, Sony Walkman, and gear.

I sought kindness, without articulating it that way, and I found mosquitoes, rain, thundering eighteen wheelers storming past just a hair’s width past me, and kindness.

The beautiful valley of the first mountain I climbed in Alabama. Muscle Shoals. The loveliness of the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. The sound of cicadas in Arkansas’ rolling hills. Granada Lake. The rocky vastness of Texas.

After each hundred miles, I would be amazed I had pedaled so far. I would recount and reflect on what I had seen. For instance, I saw animals I never saw on Signal Mountain such as armadillos which looked so alien and comical.

When I go to the beach, I am seeking beauty that I know is there waiting for me. Well, I say I know it. When we speak that way, we are expressing our underlying and eternal connection to being.

If I fly to Hawaii or go on a cruise, I am exploring beyond the world I know. Sometimes I just see the grandeur of what exists and I watch it like a scientist, but there are profoundly spiritual times when I sense my connection to everything.

During those times also, it seems so much like a kindness is being done to me.

Blessings…

A SABBATH PRAYER

Welcome back.  Let's begin to rest, or if we cannot rest tomorrow or Sunday, let us find a day to turn aside from labor.

This Sabbath Prayer comes from The Standard Prayer Book  by Simeon Singer.

As you pray it with me, I hope you experience the great ethical and moral concern of the Jewish people.  

Often themes of family and just being plain good arise in Jewish prayers.  Let us pray:


Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed upon faithfulness. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and will not be afraid: for Jah the Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.

—O Sovereign of the universe, in thy holy words it is written, saying, He that trusteth in the Lord, lovingkindness shall compass him, about; and it is written, "And thou givest life to them all." 

O Lord God of truth, vouchsafe blessing and prosperity upon all the work of my hands, for I trust in thee that thou wilt so bless me through my occupation and calling, that I may be enabled to support myself and the members of my household with ease and not with pain, by lawful and not by forbidden means, unto life and peace. In me also let the scripture be fulfilled, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." Amen!


See sacred-texts.com for more.  

GOD IS KIND

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind.

I have been reflecting on God as love and applying that to 1 Corinthians 13.  Life with all of its suffering built into nature also reveals much that is kind.

For all of us who are conscious, kindness occurs to us every day in life itself as well as within those sudden expressions of good will we experience from people. 

Much of the kindness we experience that is not from people happens throughout the day. 

I recall the view of the Sequatchie Valley, with its green fields and trees, rolling hills and roads showing itself as I drove around the Highway 111 curve from work.  Beauty embedded in being--the joy of seeing that every day was a kindness from God.

Clouds rolling into San Francisco from the ocean felt like a kindness as I watched from Chapel Hill in Mill Valley.  Once from atop Mount Tamalpais, I saw a yellow pollen mist stretch its tendrils toward that lovely city that never failed to stir me with awe when I watched it from afar.  Beauty embedded in being...

The golden orb weaver whose web stretched across my porch kindly caught gnats and moths.  Never have I seen a spider so lovely and gemlike in the sun. Beauty embedded in being...

Driving through boulevards lined on both sides with huge oaks and their Spanish moss camps draping toward the road feels like a surprise gift left every day for me from an admirer. Beauty embedded in being...

As the poet William Carlos Williams wrote:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Of course, these are not kindnesses in the sense that they were created for me, put in their places for me, and evolved for the sole purpose of pleasing me.  The mockingbird sings for me only insofar as I hear it and love it, but that is not why it sings.

 Our lives unfold in sight, hearing, the ability to touch and smell and taste.  Our brief existences sally forth as our brains form our minds, shape our perceptions, color our world, keep our hearts beating, our lungs breathing, and our bellies nourishing us. 

Our lives are glazed with such kindness within being.  To it we are connected, into it we are thrown, within it we move and have life.

I so much never want to die.  Indeed, eternity is built into the system. The energy that makes up who I am never dies.  It changes form.

Will I be conscious after I am dead?  If I am, it would take an eternity for me to express my gratitude.  To be with the wife whom I adore—she who has the ability to be so interesting it would take several eternities to exhaust her—to be with daughters who are equally as interesting as their mother, to be with others who love me enough, whom I love enough to know in this life—do we all fantasize about such an eternal life?

Maybe the source of this kindness of which I wrote will grant even this last great kindness.  Who can say?

Blessings…

A DESCRIPTION OF GOD

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about Paul's description of love in 1 Corinthians 13.

Imagine inserting the word "God" for the word "love" as you read. If we do that, the first part of the passage would be telling us that we could have the entire universe, but without God we would have nothing.

The temptation here is to speak to atheists by saying that they might have all knowledge, all science (same thing sort of), and all the answers, but with no God as they claim they have in this life means they have nothing.

Paul is not writing to atheists. He is writing to his church. He is writing to Christians. We, just as much as anyone, and truly more than anyone, need to live Paul's message.

Look at our history. For the first two hundred years we had schisms, ugly words, and ugly rhetoric to describe dissenters, but we did not murder masses of people.

With Constantine came the reins of power given to Christians. Did we use those reigns to guide the church in the direction Jesus taught?  Did we move toward the kind of humanitarian care love requires?  

History tells us the answer. It shows why the people of the world may not universally love us and trust us. We have murdered a lot of our fellow human beings, and among them, we have murdered a lot of our own brothers and sisters.

As I read the passage, I wonder if Paul's concern is about a spiritual condition or is it a statement of being?

Recall, that many times I have written that God is the ground of being. No God means no anything. No God means nothing is all there is and there ain't anymore.

This is a statement of being. It is impossible for any of us to not have God. We live in God, and since God is love, we live in love. We may resist God, kicking and screaming, posing every rationale we can against God, but there it is. We have God. We have love. We have it all whether we know it or not.

Of course, when we love we exist in the most profound spiritual state ever known. So love is all about spirit and being.

In the first few verses of this passage, Paul is explaining the value of love. Love should be our ultimate concern since we are Christians.

Love should be everyone's ultimate concern.

  

Power, riches, fame, and anything else we value in this life are nothing if we have not love. Our lives are so empty when they can be filled with love, but are not.

To sum this up: 

If I speak with the charisma of a god,

If I know and understand everything,

If my faith transcends natural law,

If I give all my wealth away,

If I martyr my life,

And I have no God-love

Then my being in this world is a big fat zero.

Next:  Imagining God as kind. It's easy if you try.

Blessings...

OUR GOD OF LOVE EXPLAINED

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about our God of love.

I'm a teacher so tonight I want to give a homework assignment. Tonight, read 1 Corinthians 13. As you read it, imagine that Paul is describing God.

God is love. Paul is describing love; therefore, Paul is describing God.

Go ahead. Has your comprehension of God changed?  Better yet, has it been transformed?

Blessings...

THE ONTOLOGY OF LOVE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies earth.

Welcome back. Let's keep thinking about love.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not love God. In my youth, I knew God loved me, but my church taught me that god loved me as long as I obeyed his will. 

It was the eternal, most conditional love ever conceived by god and man.

Then I heard the good news that God loved me unconditionally. To learn that God loved me unconditionally, no matter what, and to hear that there was no longer any condemnation in Christ was truly gospel to a habitual sinner like me.

For me to find out that God loved me more than I loved God--well, one cannot help but receive that news eagerly and with profound relief. I did not think it was possible that God loved me more than I loved god because I loved god despite the terrible things God did to people.

And I was relieved because I could not fathom love for anyone as flawed as I infinitely am. 

Here is where I thought wrongly about God: I used the word “love” as an action verb and God as the subject. This is the ancient false assumption that God is a being who acts on the world. What is the nature of God's being in the world?

Before I continue, I must define a word. Ontology is the study of what is and why what is is what it is. Ontology is the study of being. 

Two Greek words make the one word ontology:  ontos which means "being" and logos which means "study" or "logic." Ontology is the study or logic of being.

God is not a being, not even a Supreme Being. God is the ground of everything that is. God is the answer to the question of why there is something and not nothing.

Being moves and has its being in God. All that is is in God.

The word "God" is not a name. There is no name that identifies God--not even Yahweh since Yahweh has been relegated to a sky god. But the meaning of Yahweh points to the ground of being. Yahweh means, "I am."  It is the best name conceivable for Being-itself.

God is the name we use to point to the source of creation. God is the name we use to point to the being that resists nonbeing. No God means nothing, no being, nihil, nada.  But the possiblity of no God is impossible.

What I am writing may sound theologically deep to some. Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology explains more thoroughly what I seek to condense here.

Were I writing to atheists, I would write differently. I would have to answer to the tautological nature of what I am writing, but that is not a question here. Instead, I turn to the relationship between the ground of being and the Christian concern.

We Christians believe that the ground of everything that is—is love. The nature of God is love. God does not love because God chooses to love in the way one who is a being chooses to love or not love. God loves because God is love.

That God is love was written as a proposition once in the Bible (I John 4:8). It is implied in many other passages.

The statement, "God is love," is the only Christian doctrine that can be true. It is the only doctrine that really matters.

As I live, I must love. I must open myself to God so God can love through my life. Such love has appeared in Jesus the Christ so it can be done.

Many of us do not know what it means to love the way our God of love loves. We who do know might say that love as a goal to be achieved or a prize to be won is not nearly as difficult as having the grace or gift to love as God loves in this world. We manifest love in our choices, desires, and deliberations even as the world resists love from generation to generation.

Faith and hope are more attainable than love. Faith and hope are valued more than God’s love in this power mad world.

So, what does such love look like in a life? 

Blessings…