I have a mixed relationship with God. I can tell you all the things I want to think about God; all the things I want to believe about God. I want to believe that God is all energy, all possibility and all the potential in the world. God would be, in this sense, the stuff of the life, the power of creativity and the innovation that comes from being awake, aware and jazzed about the gift of living. This is the kind of God I can sink my teeth into. This is a god, beyond God. This is the god that changes the world. This is the god that lives at the deepest core of life.
See, I can tell you what I want to believe.
However, I am still saddled with the God of my childhood, the God of the presses, the God of masses, the God of my country, the God who lives and reigns in all those old-time hymns. This is the God that controls; that punishes wayward children. This is the God who smites the wicked and teaches the faithful through hardship. This is the God who already has a plan for me and for you and our job is simply to live it out without much say on our part. We are part of this God’s plan and there is nothing we can do about it. God is in control. God gets what He wants. He kills and heals at a whim. He is the ultimate authority. There is the idea that this God loves, but it is a rainbow kind of love. It comes mysteriously, infrequently and vanishes quickly.
It was so incredibly easy to write that last paragraph. This God is so big in my spirit that the diatribe just pours out without a thought. It is my conditioned response to God and it is this response that is holding me back like you would not believe. I cannot move forward spiritually, professionally or personally with this monkey on my pigtails.
How to let this God go, that is the question.
