All posts tagged God
I'm not always wearing my full habit...
When a person loves another dearly, he desires strongly to be close to the other: therefore, why be afraid to die? Death brings us to God!
St. Josephine Bakhita (via radioteopoli)
Undercover Nun is not afraid of death. I am, however, uncomfortable with dying. The process of dying is not always (or often) pleasant or dignified, and I expect it won’t feel very good. I don’t look forward to it. But after that? No problem: I want to be with God!
(Source: joecatholic, via radioteopoli)
Of wilderness, two-by-fours, and the gospel
I’ve noticed a few things that seem to keenly affect me. One is how I feel when I need some form of being taken care of, and the person I ask for it and/or expect it from doesn’t come through. I realize that people can’t read my mind, so it takes me a little time to sort out my feelings in the latter case. Either way, though, I feel frustrated and betrayed. I do a lot of taking care of people. I enjoy it, and it blesses me. But everybody needs to be taken care of, at some point, even the caretakers.
Another is when I can tell I’ve disappointed somebody, let somebody down. It’s worst, of course, when that somebody is a person I really care about or a person I want to think well of me; I feel like the world’s biggest heel. The problem with this one is that I don’t always understand that I’ve disappointed someone until they are very clear about this. I can be good at reading people, and I can also be totally oblivious.
There’s something about the period between about 2:30 and 4:30 am. If there were a time of day that is the desert wilderness — as opposed to the times of day that are growing fields or orchards ready for harvest — then it would fall in that range of hours. The neighborhood is quiet. The home is silent, holding only those little creaks and clicks and hums that the house makes. You’re too tired to do anything, and too awake to stay in bed and sleep. These wilderness hours, they are the time of existential crisis, the time when we are stripped bare, vulnerable to thoughts, ideas, and feelings of the worst kind.
When I lie awake during these hours, I become aware of all the people I’ve let down ever, and I feel like a poop. Not just any poop, but the poop of the creatures that eat poop: the lowest of the low. And I fear that nobody is really taking care of me, not as me; everyone’s just doing their own thing, and when it happens to help me, well, then good for me. Or maybe I come to the stunning realization that they only take care of me because they feel sorry for me, this worthless poop. I begin to wonder if I’m wrong about everything and everybody. Is love actually real? Is it only really self-interest after all? And if love mightn’t be real, then family doesn’t matter and friendship doesn’t matter, and we’re all just terribly and terrifyingly alone. And worst of all, if all of this is true, then what does it say about God? Is God real, or have we just made God up? Is everything just hopeless and pointless, and then we disappear into oblivion?
Wilderness sucks. There’s no other way to say it. When we’re in the times or places or life-situations of desert wilderness, it just sucks. Thankfully, God’s been pretty handy with the Great Cosmic Two-by-Four (aka, “Clue-by-Four”), with which God can whack me upside the head when I start circling the drain with these thoughts. It doesn’t always take a whack upside the head; sometimes it’s more of a poke with the Little Cosmic Twig or even a whisper from the Cosmic Rustling Leaves.
And that’s the Good News: even in the driest desert, in the darkest night, the furthest reaches of the wilderness, God is there. Nothing can separate us from God’s love. Not us, not any other person, not any substance, not any accident of birth or illness or anything else, not any being that has ever been created: nothing whatsoever can separate us from God’s love.
Not even letting God down.
Tebow’s success has commentators, fans discussing God's role in football
Dear Everyone (I’m looking at you, awful football commentators),
I’m 99% sure God doesn’t care about the NFL.
Love,
PW
Me too. 99% sure God doesn’t care about the NFL. Also, I’m 100% sure that God loves each player in the NFL perfectly, scandalously, and without limit. Just like how God loves you and me and everyone else.
“We might not like it, but it’s in the Bible, so…”
Go. Read this NOW.
I’m very much disturbed to see how often it is that Christians are so devoutly interested in upholding their scriptures that they don’t mind if either God or neighbor gets black and blue in the process.
The trick to being an evangelical these days seems to be the willingness to maintain that evil is not necessarily evil when it comes to God. Besmirching His character under the ironic cover of defending God, what passes for good Christian apologetics is actually much more of a defense of prized doctrines such as inerrancy or Augustinian/Reformed soteriology than the only thing worth defending, viz. God’s character. Defending both our carefully constructed doctrines and God’s character cannot always be done simultaneously because they are often at loggerheads (or else many popular apologists would be without a job). Slick, ear-tickling apologetics serve the much-in-demand function of reassuring people that the Bible is everything they think it needs to be in order for their faith to remain comfortable and unquestionable.
….
I’ll be blunt: Holy Scripture or “historic, orthodox” doctrines notwithstanding, the only way God is worth worshiping is if He’s good and loving through and through. I will not subjugate love to scarcely warranted glory or petty retribution disguised as justice. My faith is in a God whose soul is more lovely than ours, who has a higher, more wholesome sense of love and justice than we are able to walk in as humans. My hope is built on nothing less than this!
Srsly. Go read it. I think you’ll be glad you did.
Poverty isn’t caused by accident. There are unjust systems and structures that create and perpetuate poverty and human suffering. And service alone is never enough; working to change both the attitudes and institutional arrangements that cause poverty is required.
To change injustice, you must confront politics.
Jim Wallis, in What is ‘Biblical Politics’? at Sojourners (emphasis mine)
He continues (again, emphasis mine):
This is what the Bible teaches us. The scriptures reveal a God of justice, not merely a God of charity. Words such as oppression and justice fill the Bible. The most common objects of the prophets’ judgments are kings, rulers, judges, employers — the rich and the powerful in charge of the world’s governments, courts, economies, systems, and structures. When those who are in charge mistreat the poor and vulnerable, say the scriptures, it is not just unkind but also wrong and unjust, and it makes God angry.
The subjects of the scriptures’ concern are always the widow and the orphan, the poor and oppressed, the victims of courts or unscrupulous employers, debtors whose debts need to be forgiven, strangers in the land who need to be welcomed. And the topics of the prophets’ messages to the powerful are things like land, labor, capital, judicial decisions, employer practices, rulers’ dictates, and the decisions of the powerful — all the stuff of politics.
How are your Representatives and Senators doing, when it comes to biblical politics? Do they take care of the widows, the orphans, the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed in their district or state? Or do they stay where they are comfortable, among the rich and powerful and privileged?
Oh my… God?
THE RUBBER DUCKY!!!
Reblogged from a whole bunch of people, including… purpleferretspirit:pinktriangleonhersleeve:laughingsquid:
Now this is not a god I would want to worship.
You know what? Me neither.
While I don’t want to get too deep into the theology of baptism, if I believed that God loved any person any less because that person hadn’t been sprinkled, dunked, or splashed with water, then I would choose not to be a Christian.
Making such a distinction is just like the argument in the early church about whether converts to The Way had to be circumcised. Does God love this man more than that one, because this one has been circumcised? It sounds absolutely ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet, people are willing to believe that an action performed by a human being can cause God to love this person more than God loves that one. It is patently absurd. And the reason is right there for us in scripture, written in a letter to a group of early followers of The Way:
For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers,
nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It’s that simple. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not circumcision nor un-circumcision. Not water nor lack of water. Not priestly blessing nor human cursing. Not anything at all. Nothing.
God loves us all. Period. Full stop.
Amen! Alleluia!
Athanasius compared the Trinity to a lighted candle: the lighted candle is a flame; the flame is light and the flame is heat, but it is all one flame. The One God is the creator of all, the one God is the incarnated light of Jesus, and the one God is the warming presence of the Holy Spirit. All of these manifestations are at the same time the flame of the lighted candle. This remains the best analogy I have found to describe the Trinity.
Just blame it on your predecessor! Kidding aside, though, I’d tell him or her that when things don’t seem to be going too well and there are people who are angry and upset, remember you’re still there to love them. Ultimately they’re all seeking to do God’s will and sometimes people express it in different ways, in ways perhaps that you wouldn’t do it, or you wish they wouldn’t do it.
In response to the question, What would you say if your successor came to you for advice on heading the Diocese?, Bishop Bruce says something wonderful and powerful about God, and about the work we are all called to do as followers of the Living God.
Jesus spake these words and said, “No matter how much they do things wrong or disagree with thee, remember thou are still there to love them.”
(Source: anglicanjournal.com)
ryking: “The Fair Weather Friend”
You do. But honey, where was it ever written that bad things never happen to faithful people?
Shit happens. It just… does. It isn’t God’s plan for you to suffer; it isn’t God’s plan for any of God’s beloved children to suffer. But sometimes, well, shit just happens.
The Good News is that God promises to redeem every situation, no matter how shitty it is. Redemption will come. It may be in the form of the aid that relief organizations bring to your neighborhood. It can take many different forms, and there may be several different ones that happen to you. So nail the shit to the cross, and open your eyes to see the resurrection when it happens — it always does.
Undercover Nun’s Theodicy:
- Sometimes, shit happens.
- Good stuff happens, too. ALWAYS. That’s God’s promise.
Corollaries:
- Life isn’t fair.
- It isn’t all about you.
- It isn’t all about any other individual, either.
- It’s all about God, who loves you.
