You can’t tell me that God does not break his (or her or its) own rules and move past his own boundaries (or perhaps they’re only ours, human) to meet those on the edge or who have jumped off, who left. To sit with them in their pain and the story of their leaving, whether they want him or believe in him or not or even hate him or anything to do with him, this God willingly drug through the muck of hard human experience.
Will you do the same?
It’s what is still so compelling about Jesus. Sitting with us in our shit whether we know or love or accept him or not because it is an inherent reality of the universe—God, love, with us, apart from and independent of our acceptance or belief.
Will you do the same?
Is God’s love so entirely humble and self-effacing? Is ours? The further I move from the center the further I see love’s reach to be.
Over the past few months I have been interviewing others about their spiritual deconstruction. I speak with those who leave and hear their stories; I am a witness to grief. And whether they want anything to do with this damaged God or defiled Christianity or not has no bearing on the distance love travels to reach them, and remain. It is when I see God—or call it Jesus or Spirit or Presence or whatever you’d like—so recklessly break its own rules and move past its own boundaries that I still manage to believe something of it is true, meaningful, and so very concerned with the flesh and blood, oh yes the blood, of our lived experience, even when it takes us away from the “truth” or a God we no longer have the heart to reach out for or find.
Meet it halfway? Truly? Do you understand how far is halfway for the one whose very survival meant running from a faith that made them disappear? Halfway is still too far. That’s why love must cover the distance. And not our own. Our love for it left long ago.
Our feeble reaching for or running from God is irrelevant if Love alone covers the distance.
