Sadly, I understood what he meant. Our fear of not being worthy of love...our fear of punishment...our fear of failure often gets displaced onto our deity.
We miss the big themes of the Bible. There is story after story of God reaching out in relationship to imperfect humans, and loving them in their humanity. The Gospels are reports of God coming down and living as man in the form of Jesus. Humble. Healing. And after being treated horribly...forgiving.
We often miss the point.
What would our world look like if we believed that God was friendly? Would we stop our worry, striving, mental chess moves and all of the things we think are necessary to survive and embrace relationship with that God? Would we trust Him?
Love is a force that people understand outside of religion, doctrine and creed. It is intimate and personal. If "God is love," then the very presence and action of love is His presence and action. And the thing is that we recognize love in all of its forms...warmth, kindness, goodness, time, care, sacrifice, humility, adoration...
Yet we've been fooled by things disguised as love that didn't deliver. And that has made us wary. So, somehow it feels safer to embrace a set of objective rules that we can follow or a set of tenets to believe which will ensure that our deity will have to love us. (Which if you really think about it is crazy. We're talking about a God big enough to make the earth, time, space and all of us.)
What if we simply embraced a God who loves us? One who knows about all of our flaws, sins, insecurities and battles...and yet...adores us. Not adores us if we do x,y, and z, but actually adores us. Opening ourselves to that love without reservation is terrifying. Rules are easier.
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