I read that you have written:
“Yeah, when I make an act of contrition, I guess I’m thinking that Hell is dreadful and if I keep this stuff up and don’t have frequent and purposeful (and pious and the rest) recourse to the assured means of Grace, I could end up there. “
I had written asking if Hell would be separation from God, which I am thinking is occurring here and now as well as in the past and in the future. I am thinking that the “ending up” is the end of a path.
“when I momentarily turn away. But I don’t WORRY about it. Does that make sense? “
You are a very blessed person. Momentarily !! There is no fear that the fallen state might someday have interference perhaps unsuspectingly if not guarded against? Especially this would be when God is ignoring you?
But on the other side of the analogy, it’s hard for me to believe that God would remove all the graces that keep me choosing and yearning to see HIm more clearly, love Him more dearly, follow HIm more nearly day by day.
Is not the God of Christianity always loving His people? I am wondering how it is that the thought of God “removing graces” is a side of an analogy, if the sin is always coming from Satan, and the removal of graces is an impossibility. Have not these graces always been coming from God from all time? And yet, in my thinking, in the presence of graces people are turning away?
I try to hang around Him as much as He lets me.
I am not understanding this. God is limiting your access to Him? He is saying to you “not now” ? Or He is not saying to yo anything at all? In my thinking this would be God abandoning the person to Satan. I am thinking that would be putting a person into temptation, much harder for the person to remain loyal, very lonely for the person. Would that not be leading the person into temptation? A person might always wonder is God with me? The devotion of the person to God would never be completely because the devotion of God to the person would never be completely?
But I’m also suggesting that the Love of God to someone who hates Him, who has locked himself into perpetual hate of the good and of the Good, that might be Hell.
I do not understand. This is meaning that Hell is only when there is a permanent or perpetual separation ? Transient separations are not Hell?
I am not understanding the “might be” of this sentence. I am thinking that is Hell.
This is very different from how I am thinking about God.
May the Sabbath be Holy!
Thanking you,
You write
Especially this would be when God is ignoring you?
I don't think God ever ignores - is unknowing about - any of His creation. All the time, "His eye is on the sparrow," and rumor has it that you are of more worth than many sparrows. So I'll need help with what you might mean by God ignoring me.
So far as I now the only time anyone in the Bible seriously talks about God not knowing (ignoring) something, it's when we ask Him to "forget" our sins. But I think it's ridiculous to ask God to forget the way I forget what I went upstairs to get or the way I forget who was Jefferson's vice-president. The ideas of remembering and forgetting are very rich in the Bible, I think.
I think there are two kinds of "fear". I have introduced people to shooting with small arms. I encourage them to treat them with the utmost respect. No playing around. But I don't want anyone to be so afraid of a pistol that he can't shoot straight. Or with Rappelling: I don't ever want to get casual and relaxed about hanging on a rope off a cliff. But I don't want anyone to be so afraid they can't move either. IS that distinction apposite? useful?
I rely on God to keep me straight. I rely on Him to teach me more and more how much I depend on Him. As I do so, I pray and do other things related to growing closer to Him and in hopes that somehow I will be able more and more -- and more and more continually and consistently -- to hand my will over to Him. He has never tricked me. He has always been patient with me. He has shown me blessings beyond my expectation and so far beyond anything good I ever did that it would be flat silly to talk about my deserving the least particle of them. So I trust Him. I rely on Him.
All I meant by "the other side of the analogy" was that I was abandoning the comparison to Physical Therapy and talking about the subject without the "figure".
I would not say the removal of graces is an impossibility. God can do as He will. But I don't see Him removing graces. St. Paul says he is faithful for he cannot deny Himself. (But I think we must say that it is His Choice to be who He is.
I do think, that somehow it is possible for people to refuse to turn to God, or to turn away from Him forever. I do not understand why or how this should be so. I know I find I forget God. not that He ignores me, but that I can't find my car keys and I ignore Him and act like it's the end of the world.
What I SAY is that God "let's that happen" because He is slowly teaching me to choose Him every minute - using both positive and negative reinforcement.
Our praying "Lead us not into temptation," is a request, not a command. It seems, though that off and on since 1971, which is when I started trying to step into what God was drawing me into, I have found times when it SEEMED that I was abandoned. What I tell myself there is "God is teaching me to stick with Him when it doesn't SEEM easy. He's training my will."
And that's kind of where the physical Therapy image comes back in. You know those therapists HURT you! They cause you PAIN! But it's easy to believe that they are doing it to help heal the wounded part of you. I tink GO is doing something like improving my strength and range of motion. And sometimes it hurts.
Again it's a matter of trust. It also seems to be something like training butterflies. The wind that would blow them wherever you want them to go would damage them. God wants me to flutter to Him, but still to be, well, human -- whatever that is. That's when the erotic images, the wooing and courtship language comes into play.
A long time ago I ministered to a retarded child who had gone temporarily psychotic because of nightmarish emergency procedures she had to endure after a patch sewn into her heart blew loose. Her way of relating to grown ups was to try to claw them with her fingers and to reach into her diapers and to smear them with feces.
Slowly I was able, by the grace of God, to teach her it was better for all of us if she allowed herself just to be cuddled and held and loved. But it was pretty ferocious there for a while.
God taught the children of Israel to trust Him, I think. and they learned no better than I. They DID step between the walls of water, but before and after passing through the Red Sea, though they had seen signs and wonders, they easily fell into mistrust. "Were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us here to die?"
So in my life and in the Scriptures I find God slowly, slowly, patiently teaching us how to turn more and more to Him, not just for good feelings or pleasant experiences, but for Him as He is in himself.
Strictly speaking, transient separations cannot be Hell because Hell is the place where there is no hope. IF Hell is a separation, as it well may be ( my comments were only speculative) it is, as it were, the final state, the end of the game. There are no do-overs. If this is right, then the separations I feel because I am as ashamed to look God in the face as I am to see a person I have wronged, are not Hell because I have hope that my sin is forgiven and that the full enjoyment of a relationship is a possibility. "I have sinned, I have sinned, and I know my wickedness only to well!" Sometimes that's the best thing to say to God. But we also ask for forgiveness because, as Psalm 51 says, we can being others to God. That is our falling and God's reaching out to us becomes the basis for our reaching out to others.
I'm not sure that's relevant.
we're probably going to have to settle on one topic and work through it slowly together.
Thank you for your questions. I hope some of what I said was helpful and even maybe by the grace of God, true!
The Sabbath! The Day of Rest and of Freedom! The day, we say, when our Lord rested in Death while He turned the Universe upside down - or maybe right side up!
I always give my dog and the cats who are moving in on me a little extra treat on The Lord's Day. There should be rejoicing. Why should they go hungry?