I can’t believe how back and forth I still am. One day I am confident in my faith, strong, full of light. Then a day, or days, or weeks, maybe even months, I find my self in a foul mood, skeptical about everyone and everything, and sometimes generally hating life, and wishing mine was over.

Is that just human nature? I don’t really know. It is so very tiring.

Sometimes I’m full of life, love, and appreciation for my existence, my family, my friends. Other times I feel as though I’m alone and without all of these I’ve mentioned. Why? I wish I knew. I’m 55 years old and I still waver back and forth. The only constant in my life for about the last 7 years or so is that my mind about God has changed.

I no longer believe God is one who would create a people who would grow into billions, maybe even trillions over time, knowing that a majority of His creation would be damned to a place called hell, being tortured with unbearable pain for all eternity. That is one cruel god, one who desires to be feared. And if this god is feared because of such an enormous threat to one’s eternal soul, that god cannot be loved by anyone. Our only reason for worshiping such a god would only be fear of the afterlife, of eternal torture.

What I have come to believe in the past 7 years is that God is Love. Not the god of love or one who can show love, but, He is Love itself. He cannot help but love. It is actually who He is. And somehow or another, that’s what Jesus came to earth and exposing himself to death was all about.

Think about it for a moment. If Jesus (Yeshua) was the Son of this God of love and came to show us what His father was like then what we believe today about God and heaven and hell and eternity has lost something over the last 2,000 years or so. What Jesus showed us and what we believe today does not match up. Jesus showed us a complete picture of love and compassion. So that is the nature of his Father as well.

So I have had to rethink what I believe. I don’t believe God can be both love and a god who hates, though the King James and other translations of Hebrew scriptures may say exactly that. If this is God, he needs to seek counseling because “he is double-minded and unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8, KJV).

I do not believe God is unstable. I believe God is love just like the apostle John says.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1John 4: 7-10 NET). 

So what happens to those whom we believe do not possess love? Well, I can only speak from what I feel or believe. And I believe that no matter who you are you love someone somewhere. Even the murderers and rapist among us, the people who seem to cause others pain just for the fun of it probably at the very least desire love on some level. And I believe that if they were to encounter the love of God, which more than likely needs to come through one of us, it would begin to produce a change in them. The seed of love sown into their hearts would begin to grow. I don’t claim to know for sure, but, that is my hope.

And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5 NET).

The problem is people who would oppose this believe that only those of us who call ourselves “Christians” have the love of God.

We don’t realize that when God’s Son incarnated as human everything about our existence changed. He became one of us. He is like us. We are like Him. But we don’t truly believe that it can work both ways. But in fact, it does work both ways. At the very least, it is supposed to. We, however, resist.

Those of us who are believers have a hard time allowing the love and life of God to flow through us. And sometimes those who don’t consider themselves “Christian” do it much better than we do. I believe that is because the Spirit of Jesus flows to every man and woman. We are like Him. At least we can be.

I believe that was made possible when He became one of us. He made it possible for us to become like Him. Our existence is in Christ. Literally, everyone and every thing of substance exist in Christ. Therefore, all that God is and gives is ours.

However, here in the world of duality, we are unstable in our ways. I am unstable in all my ways. Duality. Double minded. Back and forth I go believing and not believing, confident and then faithless, loving and then hating, patient and then impatient. I am sometimes brave and fearless and yet frightened, absolutely FRIGHTENED sometimes. Full of life and sometimes wishing I had never been born.

When I remember God’s love for me all of that stops and I feel peace. God loves you too. He loves everyone, no matter what. And right now I love you. I love my family, my friends, and everything (well most everything) about my life. And this God I have just been describing to you, Jesus’ Father, I love Him with all my heart and it stabilizes me. I feel whole and at peace. I belong with Him and so do you.

Peace.