Never Abandoned

God, Jesus, Love, Universalism 0

icy lake with the words God will never leave us to face the darkness alone, no matter how deep it may be. -- Derek Ryan Kubilus

Now I don’t mean to start some kind of prooftexting war, as if arguing over theology were just a matter of slapping more verses down on the table than the other guy. I admit that one can seem to find an eternity of pain and abandonment all over the Bible – if that’s what one is looking for. And I suppose there are some evangelicals who would happily squint their eyes and apply some kind of strained interpretation to the verses I quote above to make the case that “all” never actually means “all” when talking about salvation. I used to do the same thing myself. But after years studying the Bible and the traditions of Christianity, I’ve finally given up. At some point, Christians have to stop defending the indefensible and accept the very thing that Christ came to earth to teach us: that God will always come down to us. God will never leave us abandoned. God will never leave us to face the darkness alone, no matter how deep it may be. At some point, we have to admit that, like it or not, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

— Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 68

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 18, 2025

Unshakable

Core Value, God, Love 0

People settle for saying that every human being is “worthy” or “valuable.” But these ideas are still stuck in the “measurable.” “He is a valuable member of our team.” “He is unworthy to be president.” But goodness is unshakable. Solid. The truth. There is not a thing one can do to make this not so. God does not hope that we become something other than what we are. The Pharisees kept trying to be somebody, but they didn’t know they already were. You teach children that they are valuable by valuing them. Not by insisting that they prove their value to you. There are lots of things and toxins and blindness that keep us from acknowledging this and seeing it as true, but nonetheless, it is immutably certain. Before we can love goodness, we need to find it, and see it. It’s there. It’s there.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 37

Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024

A Good Parent

God, Love 2

God does not lead the soul by shaming it, just as a good parent would not shame his or her child. It doesn’t work anyway. We all have done it at times and, if we were raised in a punitive way ourselves, we still tend to think that is the way to motivate people — by shaming them or making them feel guilty. I’ve done it enough and I’ve received it enough to know that it eventually backfires. It never works. We close down and stop trusting after that, and we use all kinds of defense mechanisms to avoid further vulnerability. God’s way actually works — to love us at even-deeper levels than we can know or love ourselves. It is really quite wonderful, and one wonders why anyone would want to miss out on this.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 101

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 10, 2023

Nothing Can Move the Dial

God, Love 0

We ask ourselves, what can move the dial on God’s love for us? Nothing. It is always at its highest setting. After all, God’s love for me is zero dependent on my love for God. But our notion of God can atrophy and get stuck in our own arrested development. And it can be hard to shake the transactional god who puts us in debt. The I-love-you, now-love-me-back god. Yet our God is utterly reliable in this unconditional love that does not waver. It has pleased God not to be God without us. God never has second thoughts about loving us. Never.

— Gregory Boyle, The Whole Language, p. 4-5

Photo: Oregon Coast, May 17, 2023

Out-Loving Us

Acceptance, Community, Grace, Jesus, Love 0

That’s the funny thing about who Jesus has to be if he’s who we hope he is: He has to be able to out-love us. That means the scandalous dinner invite isn’t just for us, it’s for the people we despise, for those we disagree with, for everyone who pushes our buttons and boils our blood and twists our insides — and we have to be on board with that. Not only do we need to accept the fact that the table is wide open, but we have to be at the ready with a chair and an extra setting for those we find it most challenging to welcome. If you’re at all like me, you’ve spent a good deal of time and effort crafting what you believe is a compelling, air-tight case against breaking bread with certain people because of the message that would send to them. We don’t want people whose religion or politics or behavior are adversarial to ours to “get away with it” by giving them proximity or showing them generosity, and that self-righteousness feels good until we realize that someone somewhere is asking Jesus why he sits with us.

— John Pavlovitz, Rise, p. 18-19
Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 7, 2023

God’s Favorite!

God, Love 0

Human love is largely determined by the attractiveness of the object. When someone is nice, good, not high-maintenance, physically attractive, important, or has a nice personality, we find it much easier to give ourselves to them or to “like” them. That’s just the way we humans operate. We naturally live in what I call the meritocracy of quid pro quo. We must be taught by God and grace how to live in an economy of grace. Divine love is a love that operates in a quite unqualified way, without making distinctions between persons and seemingly without such a thing as personal preference. Anyone who receives divine love feels like God’s favorite in that moment! We don’t even have the capacity to imagine such a notion until we have received it! Divine love is received by surrender instead of any performance principle whatsoever.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And…, p. 78

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 30, 2022

He First Loved Us.

Faith, God, Love 0

We can be gracious because we are grateful. We can love because we have been loved.

On the days when I believe, I know all this to be true. On the days when you believe, I hope you’ll know this to be true too. I hope you’ll feel deep within your heart and with every cell of your being that you are held and embraced by the God who made you, the God who redeemed you, and the God who accompanies you through every end and onward to every beginning.

Even on the days when I’m not sure I can believe it wholeheartedly, this is still the story I’m willing to be wrong about.

— Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, p. 180-181

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 21, 2022

Already Yours

Core Value, God, Love 0

It can be difficult for those of us living in a culture that prizes earning power above nearly everything else to understand that in the economy of grace, the currency of deserved and undeserved is irrelevant. It is absolutely true that you can’t earn God’s love. But it’s not because you are a helpless wretch whose sin makes it impossible for God to even look at you or because you have done something so grievously wrong that your soul has been permanently stained, as if by spiritual Sharpie. The truth is, you can’t earn God’s love because you already have it. You can’t be any more loved than you are because God’s love has already been freely and abundantly given. You can’t do anything to achieve a greater portion of God’s love because God’s love for you is already unconditional and it is already infinite.

— Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, p. 180

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 6, 2015

Enticed Through Love

God, Grace, Love 1

God always entices you through love.

You were probably taught that God would love you if and when you changed. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love and acceptance itself. This is the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But, because most common religion has not been at the mystical level, you’ve been given an inferior message — that God loves you when you change (moralism). It puts it all back on you, which is the opposite of being saved. Moralism leads you back to navel-gazing and you can never succeed at that level. You are never holy enough, pure enough, refined enough, or loving enough. Whereas, when you fall into God’s mercy, when you fall into God’s great generosity, you find, seemingly from nowhere, this capacity to change. No one is more surprised than you are. You know it is a total gift.

— Richard Rohr, Yes, And. . ., page 18

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 4, 2022