Unshackled Moments ~ July 13 ~ Loving More Than Mere Kindness

By Love, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy. And not happy in this way, or in that; just happy. What most of us mean by God is not so much a Father in Heaven, as a grandfather in heaven—a senile old benevolence who, as they say, liked to see the young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be said at the end of each day, that a good time was had by all.

~ C.S. Lewis ~ The Problem Of  Pain

It's all to easy to use the idea of love and goodness as an excuse to be selfish. If God is love and if God is good then why would He let life be so hard? If God isn't going to make my life easy and make me happy I will. If God loves me then He would want me to be happy and this makes me happy so I should be able to do it, whatever selfishness "this" is, without consequence because of grace and love. Balderdash.  God actually loves us. He isn't merely kind to us. He doesn't want us to merely feel good. He wants what's best for us. And that means at times that what He wants for us won't feel good. Sometimes love means helping someone become the best them they can be and so includes things like learning to clean up after yourself, going to the dentist even when it scares you, not playing in the street, not running with scissors and many many more things which may put a damper on the fun of the moment and therefore feel unkind but in the long run will result in a better and closer relationship with God and produce spiritual fruit in our lives far more satisfying than our selfishness. Refusing to allow us to follow our every whim and worship at the altar of our instincts and impulses does not prove that God is not good or that He doesn't love us. On the contrary it shows just how deeply He does. Sadly though, one of the side effects of the free will He gave each of us means that there will be times because of our choices and or the choices of others that life is hard, tough and miserable. Still, God is good. The key to surviving the suffering with our joy intact and a closer relationship with our Creator is to, as Lewis wrote, discover how, despite perceiving a suffering world, God is indeed still good and to come to the understanding that God's goodness and the pain of life do not cancel each other out all the time, but when they do, praise God, it is the pain that is canceled, because nothing cancels out the goodness of God.