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God and love
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The other night, I was listening to the local Christian radio station in the car. I do so not because I follow it as a source of guidance, but because I find it interesting to hear the opinions of a group with which I frequently disagree. I am also always interested in hearing what others think about God.
In any case, it got me thinking about something a friend of mine once said. She was an evangelical Christian, and spoke of her relationship with God in terms I have not usually heard used. She referred to a knowledge of God being intimately in love with her. Now, I don't think that she meant intimate as in sexually (although plenty of depictions of religious ecstacy, like Michelangelo's Pieta, look nearly orgasmic, as do some writings of cloistered nuns). However, it was very different from the usual depiction of a sort of generalized love of God for people. When she spoke, it sounded like she felt that God loved her--personally--in the same way that a best friend knows you and loves you. God as someone you could hang out with, cry with, or see movies with, who knows you in great detail, and has opinions about you, and is honestly interested in what you think.
It's not a way in which I have usually thought about God. I was brought up by United Methodists, and in our church, God was a sort of generalized loving presence. We said the same things about how God loves all of us, and how Jesus died for each of us, but I always had the feeling that we were talking about God loving us like we might love pet hamsters. God was something so far beyond us, so infinitely superior, that it was hard to imaging God's love for us as individuals. How could God even be aware of us as individuals, let alone "intimately" love each of us?
That's why my friend's idea was so striking to me. I guess if you hold that God is both loving and omnipotent, there is no reason why even a God infinitely beyond any human couldn't also have the capacity to know each of us personally, as a friend or lover, and care deeply about every one of us.
I started wondering if I wanted to feel that way about God, or (maybe more importantly) if God really wanted to feel that way about us. That led me to another thought--when I think about my best friend, or my wife, and the love we share, it seems that a necessary component of it is that it is unusual--that is, I wouldn't feel the same way about my wife or best friend if I knew that, as much as they loved me, they also loved everyone else the same way. It may be a failing on my part, but Part of me wants my best friend to love me *more* than anyone else--to be unusual and special in his or her eyes. Do I feel the same way about God?
Could that be part of the source of religious intolerance? At some level, we can't stand the idea that God isn't our best friend in the same way that a human can be? If we are intimately in love with God, and believe that God is intimately in love with us, then maybe we can't stand the idea that God might be just as intimately in love with other folks (or even everyone else) at the same time. Maybe we convince ourselves that really, God loves us *more*, because that's how love works. God is MINE. Yes, God might love you too, God loves all of us, but God loves me BEST.
I suppose that could also be why it can be so difficult and uncomfortable to talk with other people, especially those of other faiths, about God. We don't want to share.
And, of course, there's the inherent absurdity of me thinking that I could reach any truthful conclusion about God, if God even exists. But surely inherent absurdity is the natural state of a blog?
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