There has been a lot of reflection in my life on who God is, not the Americanized God, not God who is so watered down that He might as well not exist, but the true God. I have wrestled with the existence of God and through a journey into both historical, Biblical, and personal study have come to the conclusion that He most definitely exists. But then the question becomes who is He? There are many, many different views on who He is, can they all be true, is one more true than the other, or is one view true and all the others false. I think we have two major conflicts in this world today and they are both based in fear. We have those who cling tightly to legalism and are fearful to let themselves ask questions and on the polar opposite end we have those who are fearful to stop questioning and cling to any one truth. So where does that leave me? I have landed on the truth that God created us. I choose to cling to that truth for many reasons, but the truth is-I see God in everything and to deny His existence would be like saying that the trees and the sun don’t exist. I know I have felt His presence and I am fully aware of when I pull away from Him. So my questions at this point are not about the truth of His existence but instead, my questions are about who He is. So if He created us and this world and I am claiming that as truth, then I should be able to look at what he created and learn about Him. He created us, humans, we are critical thinkers, creative, inquisitive, we seek love as if it is the air we breathe, we all have opinions that center on what we believe to be just and fair. So if I pull from what I know about humans…maybe love is like air and it is the most important thing, but there is also this idea of justice/right/wrong, so that must exist too. In addition there is a need for community, purpose, contentment, peace, rest. So God must value those things too. What I find is that the complexity of being human is just a fraction of the complexity that exists within the character of God. I think when we swing too far in any direction we are likely swinging away from God. The pendulum swinging to pure self reliance, self indulgence, extreme rigidity, or life without boundaries at all; regardless of the direction, the extremes are all likely swinging far from God. God shows us that the answer is usually not in an extreme. It’s usually much simpler. It’s interesting to observe the polarization of people in this country, in the workplace, in families that is happening at such an exaggerated rate and reaching extremes of hate and disgust that is record breaking. This is born in the unbridled freedom of social media, the anger and rage on steroids in the form of ‘likes’ and ‘attention.’ We are seeking personal recognition and attention in any form over real invested relationships that foster tolerance of differences and compromise. The extreme, aggressive, thoughtless way at which we communicate is not the way God communicates with us. He speaks mostly through whispers, through tugs at the heart, and through the voices of those who love us enough to speak lovingly in disagreement. I’m exhausted by the drama of the self righteous, arrogant jabs that have become our new native language on both ends of the pendulum swing. The love I know to be true, the love I see at the heart of God , would be disappointed in all of us for losing sight of the truth that is love. We have lost the very meaning of love. We are arguing about love as if we know the meaning. I think we all have lost sight of what God meant when He said, God is Love. This is not a phrase to be used to push an agenda. Love is a word that has so much depth, that defining it could take up thousands of pages and still not scratch the surface. When I think of the truest expressions of love that I have witnessed in my life, they are all selfless. We use love as a word that is much like a weapon against one another to argue our cause, it is often filled with arrogance and used with an attitude that is so far from the concept of love that it’s nauseating. Long gone are the days of respectful disagreements and compromise. Long gone are the days where seeking truth means truly seeking truth, not manipulating things to convince others that your opinion is true through abrasive jabs. If we all could calm down and admit that we are all valuable, imperfect, and wounded, in need of what God defined as love….we might be able to find truth again. The amount of humble vulnerability that it would require of everyone, not just those who disagree with you, is huge, but it’s the only way to achieve what everyone is after….community, purpose, contentment, peace, rest, and above all love as defined by God. Let’s all define love in its purest form, without an agenda. Then let’s love like that.