(The Nationalist, 30 June 2000)
The hardest teaching to accept in the Christian faith is not the Ten Commandments, or any teaching of the church, but rather that God loves each of us personally with a love that is absolute and unconditional. We find that very difficult to believe. We live in a world that is rightly suspicious of offers that seem too good to be true; we are often skeptical and even cynical.
How could the all-powerful God, the creator of heaven and earth, possibly be interested in any of us, we who are so insignificant? How could the all-holy God love someone like me, someone who is far from holy, indeed a sinner who can sometimes hardly look himself straight in a mirror without feeling shame?
The saints tell us that God loves us, not because we are lovable, but because God is loving. Saint John the apostle goes further, and says simply, ‘God is love’. God couldn’t not love and still be God. God’s love is without conditions. (Terms and conditions don’t apply.) God doesn’t say, ‘I will love you if you become a different sort of person, and especially if you smarten up your morals’. Would a parent say something like that to his/her child? Conditional love is not love. Far from it; it is moral blackmail.
We do not offend, or hurt, or annoy God by our sins. We have no power over God and cannot offend him in any way. God is offended by our sins only because of the harm they do to us, not because of any harm they do to him. God is love; love gives of itself; that is its nature; it is self-giving. The harm our sins do is that they make us less capable of being open to God. They diminish our humanity and, for that reason, they lessen our capacity for God. (It is through our humanity that we discover God.) By focussing inwards on the self, we close off the avenue to God’s entry into us.
I’d like to suggest something practical. When you get up in the morning and drag yourself out of bed, looking by no means your radiant best, no sunshine smiles to be seen, go over to the mirror, look at yourself in it, warts and all, and then say in a voice that you can hear, ‘God loves me’. Try to let the meaning of that sink into you, and take hold of you, and become part of you. You don’t have to say any more or do any more, – just that, and let God do the rest.