Uncontrolling God

If God is love and love doesn’t control, then God doesn’t control. This is good news. If God isn’t controlling then…

• There’s no point in saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” Actually, I think a healthier approach is to think in terms of love helping you find reasons to keep moving through all the problems in life. 

• We can eliminate the cliched prayer of, “God use me…” or referring to God as someone who uses people or things. Love doesn’t use. Love invites.  

• Our choices matter. This makes your life really important. Because love doesn’t just step in and fix everything. Love is affected by your choices, and love needs your help. 

• We don’t need to be controlling. As if we could control anyone. And if we could control, well, it wouldn’t be love. 

• Surrender and release can be something beautiful. The typical Christian framework leads to a lot of what we might call cognitive dissonance. In that framework, we’ve been commanded to forgive by a God who doesn’t have to forgive because, in the end, God can send people to hell if he wants. So, we were taught to let go, all the while being taught that God doesn’t have to let go. I’m not trying to be disrespectful of those who believe in such things, but that’s not beautiful for me. That’s hypocritical! If we really believe love is uncontrolling, then to love is to engage the world the same way God engages the world. Surrender and release make sense and can be something beautiful.