WHAT IF THEY KNEW?

"Jesus Said Love Everyone" © J Kirk Richards

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A number of years ago I was sitting and talking with a very Calvinist family member about the nature of God and humans. Generally speaking, I hate those conversations because they aren't about contemplation, curiosity, or learning; instead, they're performative competitions to see who will say the "best" thing and who will say the "wrongest" thing. I especially hated these discussions with this particular person, because they were always trying, more than anyone else in the family, to prove they belonged: That they were smart enough, self-loathing enough, argued well enough to ride with the family. It often made them mean and cruel, both directly, in how they deliberately baited, mocked, and tried to humiliate me, and indirectly in how they egged others on to do the same. They were, I think, another black sheep in the world who found a place among my kin where, if they played it right, they could appear slightly more white next to me and a couple others, and they played as often as they could.

Anyway, at that point in time I was deeeeeeep in agnosticism and everything was a question. Which, for me, was so liberating. I'd never had permission to actually question or doubt or altogether scrap religious doctrines or ideas -- at least, not the deep deep ones I was told hold everything together -- but then the bottom fell out and everything I knew was in dust and pieces and the only thing you can do at that point is sift through the mess to see why and how it crumbled, and decide if it's worth reassembling, and with which bits. It made it so much easier and funner to engage the topics at hand, because I had nothing theologically to win or lose either way. I was free. Suffice to say, my family was not with me on that journey.

So as we "discussed" (read: as this family member worked to talk me into a "gotcha" corner), we came around to this idea that God loves us. People. And this was the one thing I was (and am) steadfast about: If God exists (and that's a big IF), and made us, and made us in God's own image (i.e. "like and of God"), then God definitely and irrevocably loves us, full stop. That, I had already decided, was my baseline.

They did not agree. In fact, for the next ten minutes they argued that God hates them and all the rest of us, and that this is right and good and holy. They contended that they are actually so abominable and disgraceful, so full of sin and shame and garbage, that they deserved all the medical hell they'd recently suffered, and infinitely worse. And that the only reason they didn't suffer and die from all that painful agony, the months spent in the hospital, is because they are "saved by Jesus" who died in their place and made it so when God looks at them, God only sees Jesus. Which is good, because God does Love Jesus. God really respects Jesus for all that suffering he endured to assuage God's wrath and satisfy God's rage. And however much God hates and despises them and the rest of us -- and boy howdy, they said, God really does hate and wants to send all of us to hell forever -- God loves Jesus even more. And that's how they're saved; that's how all salvation works.

God loves and respects Jesus more than God hates the rest of us.

As I listened, it didn't so much as stun me as it did quiet me all the way to my center. I had no idea that was what they thought about themself or what they truly believed about how God sees them and me and everyone.

I told them, softly then, "I don't really know what to say about that." Weirdly, that made them drop their guard. They weren't used to the other party having no rebuttal (or at least passionately agreeing, as the choir must). They weren't used to someone not knowing what to say next. So the energy shifted and got a little rounder. And that's how we left it. Me, in the dead silence of their truth -- them with its deafening roar.

In the hours and days and years that followed, my only and abiding thought was and remains: What if they knew they are loved?

And not just loved, but lovable.

What if they knew in their belly that God and other people really do love them, Jesus aside, and all sin and humanness considered: 
     God loves them. We love them.
     (( I )) love them.
     Fully, irrevocably, without condition or caveat,
    just because they are made of love and wonder and God, and are inherently and indelibly lovable.

What would they be like if they knew they cannot out-run or out-sin or out-anything their belovedness?