Who Does God Say I Am?

Famed theologian A.W. Tozer once said that my thoughts about God are the most important thing about me. I’d take that a bit deeper – how I think about how God thinks about me is the most important thing about me. If I get this right, I get so many other things right.

Most Christians, however devout we might be, get this wrong.

We live in a culture that eviscerates people when they screw up – we make successful TV shows about it. And you don’t have to go far find a religious person who’ll say that God values only those who do good.

Those who do bad? God love ’em, but He doesn’t really love ’em.

We’re left feeling like we’re good when we act good, and bad when we screw something up. When we ask the question, “Who does God say I am?” we’re tempted, mightily so, to believe that our behavior defines us, that God’s love is conditional, and that, when we screw up, which we all know is just around the corner, we’re toast.

In the scriptures however, God doesn’t consider what we bring or don’t bring to the table, how faithful we are to His laws, how much money we give, Rosaries spoken, etc.

God’s love for us, and the value He sees in us, is conditional on nothing.

Nothing.

God is so extreme in His unconditionality that it seems alien, even down right wrong to our Western minds so hell-bent on defining people by what they can/can’t/will/won’t do.

“What’s the point of faith if it doesn’t make you a better person?” some might say, and everyone’s favorite, “God helps those who help themselves” – a verse you’ll find nowhere in the Bible.

Who the Bible Says I Am

There are scads of passages that speak directly about you, how God looks at you, and how you should look at yourself.

First, you are “His child.” It’s one of the most unconditional propositions in the Bible. Got kids? I do. They drive me crazy, and bring to the surface all the unhealed things I’ve been carrying around in my soul since before I had kids. But there’s nothing these kids can do to keep me from loving them. I’m in this for the long haul.

So is God.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Next, He had us in His mind, each of us, before He created anything. Before God spread out His hands and spoke the world into creation, you, literally, were in His head.

Last, no passage in the Bible illustrates God’s unconditionality better than Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. If you’ve heard this story a million times and feel like you’ve got a good grip on it – think again. It’s an ancient Jewish story, not a white Evangelical one (click here for a post that tells this story from the perspective of Jesus’ audience).

It’s the story of a kid who leaves his wealthy family to commit every heinous sin known to humanity (from an ancient Jewish perspective), spends the lion’s share of his father’s estate, then returns home with a fake apology – no sign of remorse whatsoever. His father cuts him off, mid-fake apology, and fully restores the wayward child into complete, unearned, unconditional forgiveness.

Why it Matters

I once asked a devout Evangelical friend what she thought about religious guilt – that feeling that we all carry, the cloud over our head constantly reminding us that there’s more to do, and we’re losers for not doing it.

She said something akin to “If that’s what it takes to get the ball rolling.”

When you think about how God thinks about you, and all you come up with are negative, anxious thoughts, you’ve gotten something wrong. For whatever reason, you’ve failed to extend God’s unconditionality to yourself, and you’re suffering for it.

If I could remove every negative thought you had about yourself, what you’ve done or haven’t done, your faults, frailties, etc., you would soar. And If I could convince you of how God looks at you, and how nothing you do or don’t do can change His perspective, you would soar.

One of the biggest barriers to happiness is our self-loathing – the anxiety we have about how others look at us, or how we don’t measure up. In my 52 years on this planet, I’ve met nobody who doesn’t deal with this.

Go, make all the money you can, hang out with the cool people, drive the sweet ride, etc. If you fail to see yourself as God sees you, happiness will always be elusive.

In my time as a pastor, I’ve known people who claimed to be sold out to God, doing all kinds of crazy things on His behalf – loving others, giving, sacrificing, and doing it all out of a fullness of heart that seems baffling.

At the core of their good deeds is a deep, unmoving peace about who they are. And at the core of that is a deep, unmoveable understanding about How God sees them.

I’ve also know people who did crazy things for God out of a sense of guilt, driven by the idea that God won’t love them, or that their good deeds will salve their hurting ego.

I have an elderly friend in this predicament – unhappy, estranged from most of her family, confused, and just plain not fun to be around.

Show me someone at peace about who they are and I’ll show you someone who’ll move mountains in this world. When we’re not shackled to negative views of ourselves, we’re free-range Christians, typically excited to act as God’s hands, feet, and mouth in this world.

But when we spend our time marinating in negative views about ourselves, we’re subject to all manner of trouble, especially when it comes to God’s command that we extend His unconditional love to others.

This kind of love is impossible to extend if we haven’t first received it.

Seeing Myself the Way God Sees Me in a Place that Won’t

When we’re born, we’re seen as God sees us. Our parents are in love, and nothing will shake it. We make their lives an utter hell as they navigate the early days of parenting and all the ways we ruin their lives, but somehow, that’s OK.

As we grow, their expectations get a bit bigger. We experience, for the first time, their disappointment, and the disappointment of others. It seems that the older we get, the more conditional our world becomes. People only appreciate us when we deliver, but we can’t always deliver, and many times we do the opposite.

So we get judged, frequently, and it hurts.

We don’t know what to do with the hurt, so we extend it to others, and it feels good. We become dependent on the failures of others, which make our failures almost impossible to bear, which makes us more dependent on the failures of others.

Many of us, in our pain, will turn to religion.

What so many Western expressions of faith have in common is a generally accepted to-do list aimed at winning God’s favor and redeeming the do-er.

It’s here that so many things the Bible calls “abominations” enter into our souls, “pride” being the biggest. In our new religion, we flip from feeling like losers, to patting ourselves on the back for our obedience, to judging people who don’t adhere to our special list.

And, ironically, we never stop feeling like crap about ourselves. There’s always something to remind us that we’re not the holy rollers we’re trying so hard to become.

How do we get out of this?

Or, like St. Paul cried out (my paraphrase), “Who will rescue me from this rotting body of bull crap?”

There are two things required if we’re to live in the unconditional love of God, and finally get a true understanding of how He sees us.

First, we’re going to have to stop judging others.

Second, we’re going to have to stop judging ourselves.

Good luck.

Each of these is dependent on the other. You can’t just stop one, they both need annihilation. And if you’ve lived like I have, you’ll find this nigh unto impossible to accomplish. For many, this isn’t a habit, it’s an addiction. If we remove it, we’ll have nothing left.

This will leave a huge void in our minds – we’ll have to fill it with something.

Thankfully, there’s a God for that, ready and willing to fill the emptiness that follows when we decide to drop that turd we’ve been chewing on for most of our lives.

I won’t go into detail about the nuts and bolts of asking God to step in when I’d rather do something self-destructive, like judging others, or the sister-sin of judging myself. I’ve written about it here, but it’s something I’m still trying to figure out on a personal level.

In a nutshell, I don’t see how I’m going to accept the unconditional love of God in a world that’s anything but unconditional, unless I have regular, personal, unconditional interactions with God Himself.

Leaving all spiritual hocus pocus things aside, there’s no way to see ourselves correctly until we’re willing to let others off the hook, see past their failures, and refuse to define anyone – ANYONE – by their actions, wrong as they might be.

To the degree that I’ve been able to do this, it’s left a void, a hunger, that’s been a bit easier to fill with the truth of God’s unconditional love, and the way He sees me.

The more I feel it, the more I want to extend it to others.

Photo Credit: Craig Whitehead at Unsplash