Dear My Twin - 01

 Dear My Twin, 


So much has changed in the last year, it's really hard to know where to start. So I'll start with the thing that didn't change:

I believe God is love. I'm not sure why this is the one thing that I can't escape, and when things were very dark and unclear, it got very hazy what "God" even meant or could mean. But even though things were really awful and hard, I couldn't escape this annoying, nagging certainty, that there was a Force in the universe, that made good, intended good, and ultimately, would bring total good to pass. 

Maybe it's because I'm an optimist, at heart. But even though I was really going through difficult things, and I've endured so much abuse, survived so much trauma ... There's also so much beauty in the world. 

There's you, for example. Jordan. Cats. Cats are wonderful. Sunrises. Butterflies. The ocean. 

Platypuses. Those are hilarious. How can you not laugh when you think of them?! And laughter is such a good thing. 

Through everything, even deep betrayal, the upheaval in the church around abuse, misogyny, sexual exploitation, TOXIC THEOLOGY, I see a thread of exquisite beauty woven intentionally through the fabric of existence, and I believe that is a loving God. 

That's where I started untangling things. 

Visualize a ball of yarn. When it got wound up, it was wound badly, and all sorts of terrible things got mixed in. Sticks, dirt, thorns, bugs. Then it got rolled around in the mud and the dirt outside. It's basically a filthy, wad of mess and pain if you hit those thorns or a bug bites you. 

For me, untangling and unrolling and getting to the end of the yarn to start again, was starting with "God is love." As I slowly started winding it up again, I also believed "I know what love is." Anything that I had been taught about God that was not loving, not kind, was harsh or punitive or cruel, that didn't belong. 

There's this really twisted belief in evangelical Christianity that God is love and does cruel things. We justify it by separating ourselves out with worm theology, "Well, we are fallen, sinful creatures; we can't possibly understand what Love is, so anything that DOESN'T look like love, That's just us being stupid."

But we aren't stupid. We KNOW what evil is. You can't ascribe evil actions to a loving God and claim God is good and loving! Even now, I can hear my evangelicalized brain repeating, "Well, you know 'My ways are higher than your ways,'" but that's just stupid. 

C. S. Lewis in one of his books - I've forgotten which, but I've never forgotten the quote - talks about how if goodness (or love) is "actually" the opposite of what we understand goodness to be, language has lost it's meaning, and there's no POINT in claiming such nonsense. 

I believe it is nonsense to believe a loving God would do cruel things to the creatures God claims to love. To counter my own head with a different proof verse, "If you who are evil know how to give good gifts, HOW MUCH MORE DOES YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN?!" 

If we are smart enough to know to give an apple, and not a poisonous viper, as a "good gift" to a child, (1) that implies we are smart enough to identify what is good and what is not (so take THAT "Oh we can't know, for we are WORMS!" Proof texting is garbage. Whole picture context for the win!), (2) God only gives good things. 

This definitely fits in with the end of my thread - there is an Ultimate Force that intends good ("God") - and definitely does away with so much theology built to prop up the twisted idea that a loving and good God could simultaneously be abusive, cruel, and torturous to Their children. 

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