The Holy One is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Holy One is good to all,
and God’s compassion is over all that God has made.
—Psalm 145.8-9
This gospel is repeated over and over in scripture.
Some want to modify it, qualify it, compromise it,
or dilute it with some kind of divinely justified meanness.
But that’s not God; that’s just meanness.
There are two religions. One is the Religion of Being Right.
“Get it right,” God says, “or I’ll punish you.”
The other is the Religion of Being in Love.
“I love you,” God says. “Don’t you want to live like that?”
You can’t have both. If you follow all the rules,
sooner or later you’ll hurt somebody. If you love everybody,
sooner or later you’ll break a rule.
They’re both in the Bible. But see which one Jesus chooses,
over and over. “I desire mercy, not performing sacrifices.”
Even God’s judgment is not punishment, but love.
The greatest goal of our faith is to perfect our love,
that it be untainted by anger or self-righteousness.
This is not a discipline of trying harder, but of accepting
more deeply, more freely, the perfect love we are given.
Shed the anger, your own and God’s,
and let God be perfectly compassionate
so that you may be perfectly compassionate.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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