Category Archives: God doesn’t want to get even.
Old Age Has Its Wisdom, but Younger Generations Start Off with a Lot of What We’ve Learned: We Can All Learn from Each Other
Idealists are in danger of never being satisfied, which in one way is a good thing since we fight to make the world a better place for all, but it plays havoc with marriages. If you are an idealist without an awareness of the down side, listen up! ONLY with a relationship with a power wiser than you (GOD/ALLAH/BUDDHA/ YOUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER) will you recognize when you are thinking about ‘trading up” that it may mean you will just have to start over (and possibly over and over, etc.) to recognize that you are unrealistic about life and relationships. Believe me, watch for signals of this, in case that higher power is trying to give you a much shorter way to “growing both wiser and more able to love.” The search for the perfect person is futile. There is no such thing, including yourself. Life is a journey with both challenges and grace (if we are open to it) to become the more loving person we were created to be. (This doesn’t mean you put up with abuse.) God is alive and well and still doing the Jesus thing if we are aware of it. That can make a huge difference in the journey to becoming the best (imperfect) person we were created to be.
NEW INSIGHT
Recently my eyes were opened to the reality that someone who is tuned into the journey of grace going on in both their own life and in their generation can know in their forties what it’s taken us in our eighties a lot longer to learn! I may know some things from those years of learning that they don’t, but they are way ahead of where I was at their age. Yes, we may have gained some wisdom on our life’s journey that even a spiritual and wise forty-year-old may not have yet. But they started from a different place than us old guys did. If they were open to wisdom that our generation and some after us has learned, they are wiser at forty than we were and may not be far behind us where we are even now. Listen to them and put what you’ve learned together with what they know. Both ages have a lot to give to each other.
Justice Means Fairness to All, not Payback for Sin
As parents we get frustrated when our young children do irritating or harmful things. We don’t punish them because we are angry even if we are. We punish them so they will learn not to do that. And we get scared when they do something dangerous. So, we try to come up with a punishment to keep them from harm. Punishment is not about payback. It’s about teaching and learning. Unfortunately, many times it takes consequences to teach us enough to change our pattern of behavior. As we age, if we have learned enough times from consequences, then it may just take a verbal warning.
A lot of us, perhaps even most of us, must learn some things through consequences.
When we talk about hell as consequences for sin, sometimes that experience of hell happens in this life until we get the message.
The point is the word justice is about fairness. It’s not payback. As an imperfect human being in the heat of hurt or anger, I may want payback. I don’t think God needs justice in the sense of payback or evening up a score. Humanity projects our own human anger and desire for payback onto God.
If you believe in evolution and God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit you see humanity as unfinished and ourself as unfinished. We are in a personal spiritual journey of evolving that falls way short of perfect, but hopefully inches us forward enough to be at least perceptible to God and doesn’t set humanity back.
I recognize that some people can see the light, but most of us need to feel the heat. So, the idea of a Hell may have a use, since many, if not most people, experience a taste of it here. But the idea of a vindictive God wanting the satisfaction of seeing us getting a payback of suffering doesn’t mesh with a Jesus who fleshed out the Love of God and died forgiving not only his own people who got him tortured and killed, but even forgiving God for letting him feel abandoned on the cross.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 