From Whom No Secrets are Hid
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
May 24, 2017
As a priest, I have had the occasion over the years of
talking with different people who had suffered harshly because of
misconceptions they had about God or what God expects. One felt she had been pressured by friends
and professional caregivers to give up hope on and relinquish a loved one to
palliative care before the family was ready.
She thought that the pressure had amounted to bullying, because the
people giving the advice felt that there was only one proper decision, the one
they had made. Despite this, she
confessed to feeling a sense of guilt for not making that very decision. As it turned out, the extra time provided by
the decision to wait meant that all family members had the chance to say
farewell, and all agreed with the decision to terminate care when it was finally
made. But the feelings of guilt—first
for waiting and then for waiting no more—were painful, and the relationships
put under stress by the pressure tactics were very long in healing. Another came to me in tears wondering why God
hated him. He had been told that God
found some things about him abominable, and that he must change or be consigned
to Hell. When unable to change, he had
lost hope altogether, and any sense of connection with God. I reminded him that Scripture teaches that
God is love, and that God never willingly afflicts anyone. God made us.
When he finishes creation he says, “It is very good.” I also told him that in my experience, the
image of “God’s wrath” expresses a sense of our own alienation from God, and
not at all the heart of God. The main
task set before us by Jesus is recognizing the love of God that is already in
us and around us (“The Reign of God is in your midst!”) and then showing forth
that love to others.
We have too little time in our lives to be misled by noxious
and twisted images of God or God’s will.
Those who use the Bible to prove that God is hateful or stingy, or
scrupulously picky, are looking only at the parts of the Bible that were included
by way of giving us bad examples to contrast what is at its heart: God is a
loving Parent, who would not give his children a snake or scorpion when they
ask for fish, or a stone instead of bread.
God is so loving that by human terms we might think he is a bit crazy
and without any sense of self-respect of shame (like that father of the
Prodigal and his testy brother).
Know you are beloved.
God is crazy about you. As a
result, he demands great things from us, but nothing that he cannot give us the
power to do. He expects us to fall
naturally into his ways of love, never bulldoze ourselves or others into
them.
Grace and Peace.
–Fr. Tony+
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