I was listening to a podcast “The Habit” by Jonathan Rogers with a writer named Quina Aragon. She told the story of her struggling with writing a book on God’s love while going through severe traumatic illness. The writing struggle was not just because of the suffering, but because the suffering made her question God’s existence, much less His love.
I think I will listen to it again. First because I did not give it my full attention and I really like Mr. Rogers’ podcast. I actually have a goal on getting on there, but I need to get more serious about my art and stop playing around. Second because she had some things to say that I need to hear again. I don’t want to use words like impactful and powerful. I just need to say that her life has been different from my own and I believe she has a wisdom I require.
Because of her struggle, she said that she didn’t think God liked her. There are two ways to look at that, and I need to listen again to fully understand. Did she think God didn’t like her because she felt herself unlikable, or did she think God didn’t like her because that is God’s nature—He just doesn’t like some of us for His own reasons.
Hummphphph.
I would say most of us get down on ourselves and think God is put out with us, tired of our shenanigans (I love that word), at the end of His rope with us. We are a mess, sometimes more than others, so why wouldn’t God just shake His head and want us to go away for a while? We don’t like ourselves.
On the other hand, if we feel that God has treated us unjustly, made us suffer for no reason, perhaps it’s because, despite the theological love we have to believe He has, He doesn’t like us. Who would treat someone they really like so bad? Why would you put someone you like through such horrors?
While these might be understandable in our human minds, my answer to the question “Does God like us—or me”—is….
To ask the question, “”Why do we dislike people in the first place? We say it like this:
They just get on our nerves.
She puts me off.
He’s a slob.
He takes over meetings.
She is passive aggressive.
He thinks he’s funny but his humor is just lame.
She wants attention.
She gets herself into every committee or meeting somehow.
He’s a suck-up.
One time he just insulted me in from of the whole board. I can forgive, but I don't have to be around him if I don’t want to or need to.
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A friend of mine in my youth said, “When you try to explain why you don’t like someone, it always sounds silly.” I think he’s mostly right. We often show more of ourselves than the other person when we claim to dislike them. I can appreciate a person’s good qualities and just prefer not to have much to do with them, the same way we can acknowledge another’s faults and enjoy their company.
I thank God He is not tainted with the self-aggrandizement, lack of forgiveness, and pettiness that makes us dislike others.
So I would say He does like us. He made us as we are, put us through the experiences we have had.
However, that doesn’t answer the question. Why do some of us go through tremendous suffering, loneliness, illness and injury, loss and grief? And some of us less so, or we might think. Why do Christians in Syria live in such constant danger? Why did Quina Aragorn have to lose five organs due to a strange condition? Why do children get cancer and die, or drown, or as happened here two weeks ago, burn to death in trailer fires with their mother and grandmother?
Most of the answers I have heard over the years have been pat and shallow. That’s a subject for another time.
Part of me says it’s a bit silly to worry about whether God “likes” me or thee, as if we are Sally Field at the Oscars. Part of me says, well, it’s human; we want to know God is “okay” with us. I would return to Romans 8, upon which I have been I have been meditating and which I am coming to believe is greatly overlooked and may just answer a lot more than we think it does. Like John 11 and Hebrews 11, I want it read at my memorial.
Verse 32 He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things?
More colloquially, “If God gave His only Son to die for us, what is He going to withhold from us? “
Including liking us.
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