Such a clarifying thought, Crisanne! I also appreciate that you said so much in so little space. I sometimes feel like the Substack space is for those who can write scholarly journal level stuff. Your piece here modeled the goodness of richness without needing to write pages!
Thanks for taking the time to say that Michelle! I feel encouraged. I hit publish before I felt like it was ready or filled out enough, but yes, sometimes short can be better!
This is wonderful, Crisanne. As I was really deconstructing my evangelicalism I held onto the thought, much less concisely stated than you did here, that Jesus' words and examples must actually mean things. If Jesus uses a metaphor of God as a good father, then God's parental love and fatherly characteristics must be meaningfully aligned with the parental love and instincts that I as a father have for my own children. Obviously God's are better; but they must at least be the same _kind_ of thing.
The move that I saw my evangelical church making was to say that 'sure, God is love, but God's love is so unlike our love that it doesn't look like what we think love looks like'. And I finally came to reject that move. (I also then paired that with reading Thomas Talbott and ended up a Christian universalist... but that's another story.)
So yes: the love of God is real, and we don't have to imagine it or force it in somehow. It will feel like love, real, in-person love. Amen and hallelujah.
Yes! The ‘God’s love is so unlike our love etc” line of reasoning is so damaging. I heard it, or saw it implied in bits and pieces too. One of my last straws was someone at our church in ‘20 saying the most loving thing they could do for someone was to not wear a mask and therefore bolster that person’s immune system. It’s a very strange definition of love that’s developed.
This is SO beautiful! Ahh!! :) I smiled the whole time!
Such a clarifying thought, Crisanne! I also appreciate that you said so much in so little space. I sometimes feel like the Substack space is for those who can write scholarly journal level stuff. Your piece here modeled the goodness of richness without needing to write pages!
Thanks for taking the time to say that Michelle! I feel encouraged. I hit publish before I felt like it was ready or filled out enough, but yes, sometimes short can be better!
This is wonderful, Crisanne. As I was really deconstructing my evangelicalism I held onto the thought, much less concisely stated than you did here, that Jesus' words and examples must actually mean things. If Jesus uses a metaphor of God as a good father, then God's parental love and fatherly characteristics must be meaningfully aligned with the parental love and instincts that I as a father have for my own children. Obviously God's are better; but they must at least be the same _kind_ of thing.
The move that I saw my evangelical church making was to say that 'sure, God is love, but God's love is so unlike our love that it doesn't look like what we think love looks like'. And I finally came to reject that move. (I also then paired that with reading Thomas Talbott and ended up a Christian universalist... but that's another story.)
So yes: the love of God is real, and we don't have to imagine it or force it in somehow. It will feel like love, real, in-person love. Amen and hallelujah.
Yes! The ‘God’s love is so unlike our love etc” line of reasoning is so damaging. I heard it, or saw it implied in bits and pieces too. One of my last straws was someone at our church in ‘20 saying the most loving thing they could do for someone was to not wear a mask and therefore bolster that person’s immune system. It’s a very strange definition of love that’s developed.