A God Who Is Good

    God is Holy.
    Isn't that what the four creatures sing day and night before His throne?
    God is Holy.
    We are not. We are sinners.
    God is Holy. God is perfect, just, awesome.
    And, well, we aren't. Hence Jesus, who shed his blood because God couldn't forgive us or allow us into heaven otherwise.
    Such good news, isn't it, that God can't do certain things.
    God is Holy. 
    He might not want to condemn because love, but He can't make exceptions because holiness.We're all sinners, don't you see, and so those who persist in sin or never hear of Jesus must burn or be annihilated because holiness.
    God can't abide the homosexuals. The killers. The addicts. And before some of us, myself included, nod our heads in righteous anger, let's flip the tables: God can't abide the judgmental jerks who don't use their damn brains. Oops. 
    God can't, God can't, God can't.

    Perhaps - and I suggest this very tentatively since I'm no theologian - the concept of "can't" - does not apply to God.
    I don't want a God who can't. 
    I don't want a distant god, a god who's so repulsed by his own creations he can't stand our presence.
    I don't want a vengeful god, a god who abhors us and eagerly awaits our destruction. I have no desire for a god greedy for souls, who thinks the children deserve to be raped and beaten and slaughtered, that a woman deserves wasting away from cancer, that college student deserves to be so anxious over "success" he thinks suicide is the only option should he fail, because original sin.
    I don't want a god who is in any way tainted or contained by culture, by imagination. I don't want an American God, a Republican God or a Democrat God, a Catholic God or a Protestant God or an Orthodox God.
    I want a God Who is Good. Mind-blowingly, earth-shatteringly, soul-illuminatingly good. I want a God Who transcends my boundaries in the most gentle and stunning of ways, Who tastes our food and our pain. I want a God Who is so deeply intimate and personal He is everywhere around us, a God Who listens and grieves and laughs and dances against the wind, Who loves and loves and loveslovesloves.

    May I suggest that holiness isn't under such a threat that it requires the torture or destruction of its enemies?
    May I suggest that it's not holiness that's threatened at all, because if holiness is good, then it's part of God. And to God alone belongs the victory. Maybe, maybe I can dare to hope that all the shit of this world - the torture and pain and diseases and evil - are the things truly under threat.
    God is holy. When did that become a condemnation instead of a reason to celebrate?

    God is holy. And that's good.

Love,
Kelley

P.S. - For more into what has inspired this post, please read Slacktivist's "There Is No Such Thing as 'Holiness' Apart from Love."