Children of a loving God are loving, too

Last week I had an unexpected encounter with a person who self-described as "Bible-believing." Taken by surprise by his loquatious desire to theologize, even pontificate, while admitting he gets "passionate" about his beliefs, I thought I'd take the safer position of listening.   

When he got around to telling me that we were all sinners because of "original sin and predestination" ( I didn't laugh, but it makes me sad to hear people throw around these antiquated theological arguments with little understanding of what they really meant or of the history in which they were presented,) I knew I'd be in deep water if I said anything, so I continued to listen.  He said that our fundamental human nature was sinful and we needed Jesus' sacrifice to save us from our essential nature which otherwise would cause us to enter into eternal damnation. 

Finally, I felt the need to offer some clarification.  He had said earlier in his soliloquy that "we were all made in God's image" and by that he meant that God actually had a body and our bodies were made like his - forget the fact that in his mind God was a man, so who knows how women came into being and who we must resemble?

So, when he said that we were fundamentally bad, evil, sinners, I just had to stop him.  I reminded him that psychologists say that our essential nature is one of pure love, pure goodness, creativity and even nurturing, selflessly. Underneath all the baggage we've accumulated by an abusive, violent world in which we live, is our sacred, beautiful, radiant self, which is only love. He had trouble accepting that.  I assured him that the Bible isn't the "infallible word of God."  I assured him that never has anyone of any scholarship ever said it was "infallible" - inspired, yes; infallible, no. While the Quran has always been deemed infallible by Islam, the Bible isn't.  

I reminded him that in the Gospel of John, Jesus said that God is Spirit and we are to worship God in Spirit and in Truth.  So, if, we are made in God's image, then could we also be spirit and made in  God's spirit? And, if God is pure goodness, pure love and absolute truth, eternally alive, and ultimate Beinghood, could we, in our deepest, uncorrupted, purest state of being, be also? 

He was listening intently, somehow understanding, maybe even hoping, that it made more sense that the Bible-believing brand of God he had been so eager to tell me about. I continued to suggest that psychologists are in business to heal people who have grown up believing that they are fundamentally flawed, sinful, bad, conditionally loved which means essentially not authentically loved for who they are. I can't even begin to find how grace fits into that picture. That kind of early childhood brainwashing does serious damage to a child's psyche, often very resistent to healing. I continued to tell him that sin, by his definition, was a non-reality.  It simply didn't exist.  In the light of the idea that we are all loveable and loved, dearly, precious children of an All-loving God who loves us beyond our ability to love ourselves, the idea that such an all-loving, compassionate, merciful God could or would punish His children for their ignorance, is absolutely impossible, I said to him, "in such a light, sin is absolutely powerless.  It has no reality and therefore no real power." 

I told him, the ability to twist and corrupt a child's mind into thinking it is sinful has centuries-old repercussions. We all make mistakes in judgment, follow our hearts down wrong paths, etc., but does that make us bad, or just flawed, just lacking knowledge? In a sense we may be ignorant, rather than sinful. Ignorance is not a moral character flaw, whereas the idea of sin, is.

The world is full of, and in too many cases malevolently governed by, people who act out their childhood negative self -identity brainwashing caused by parents who instilled in their children that they were essentially bad and deserving of punishment.  Where would children who grew up believing such a violent, heinous thing about themselves direct their own deep-seated,  buried psychic anger?  Where would they project their psychic pain at this terrible untruth?  Will they live into and out of the identity bestowed on them?  Will they act out, lash out, with hatred and anger, violence and even rage - pouring it into their personal relationships, schools, workplaces, communities, or even onto the world stage?  And, in fact, isn't that the problem with our world history stretching as far back as the written word?  

I wondered aloud what it would be like if everyone realized they were essentially good, essentially loving and lovable, creative and generous, quick to share and able to help.  What if children were taught that they are really eternally alive, crystal light beams of pure love and creativity?  I can barely imagine how different the world would have been these long two thousand years if the early Church and the later church had not distorted Jesus' message that we are essentially more angelic than demonic?  Would the church have killed millions of women for witchcraft or burned thousands and thousands at the stake for differing beliefs?  It is a terrible unimaginable corruption of the Gospel of what the church did in its ignorance and arrogance, always believing that God is a judge, rather than a lover, quick to condemn rather than forgive us, and send us to eternal punishment, rather than hold and love us and help us to realize how very much we are loved?  There is room on the Earth for all of us and everyone one of us understands God a little bit differently if only because how we see things and understand things is partially influenced by our own individual history, and everyone has a different history.  God is so much bigger than anything we could ever think of or dream up and there is plenty of room in God's heart for all of us. 

Before I left, I said to him that the idea of sin which the church had taught him is not real, is in itself a travesty, even heresy,  and that in the light of truth and God's great heart, it has no power.  He blurted out that sin had caused two thousand deaths earlier that day, but then he paused, and looked at me curiously. Maybe somewhere inside him he needed to hear that he wasn't a bad person, that he was indeed a very good person.  What a crucible of truth that spins on such an axis!  What a big difference such a radically different viewpoint could have on an individual's life and the entire world! For just a moment, I saw flash behind his eyes a young child wishing what he'd heard was true and wondering what it could mean to him personally, if only just for starters. 

God has always loved us, but how it must have wounded His great heart to think that we would kill, reduce, prejudge and injure each other claiming that we were anything less than the magnificent children He created us to live and move and be, filled with His own Spirit, made in His own image, empowered with a power to create and love in ways we've only just begun to understand and experience.