"God Loves Us, But He Doesn't Like Us"

Paul Young's book, 'lies we believe about God,' pokes at an issue that has long been a fascination for me.  The difference between ‘love’ and ‘like’. 

In my mind there is a huge difference between liking someone and loving them.  You can love a person, but not like the way they may speak or act — or the way they think for that matter. 

We in the church throw around the word love like it is just an ordinary concept. Something we all just naturally understand.  When in fact it has a depth of richness that we totally miss the truth of.

Like is much easier to feel and define.

In Paul Young’s book he devotes a chapter on:  “God loves us, but doesn’t like us.”

He was asked to visit a women’s prison to talk about his book, The Shack.  Apparently the women at this prison had been gathered together by a common interest in the Shack's message about God.  

So he is given one hour to speak with these women.  It is a touching story of how protective-tough-skinned individuals drop their facade of personal protection.

At the end to the session Young did some book sighing;

“A woman stands waiting, her body tense with emotion.  When I simply take her in my arms, it is as if I set off a charge that lets a dam burst.  She sobs uncontrollably for minutes.  I whisper that it is okay, I have other shirts, that I have her and she is safe.  I can’t comprehend all the misery and humanity that is flooding through this one small touch, but it is real ands visceral and wrenching. 

Finally, she stops the heaving enough to find some words.

“Do you really think,’ she whispered in a short burst, “that Papa is fond of me?” 

And there is the question.  This tender human being is entrusting me with this monumental question." (p.25-26)

That woman’s question is the deepest of wonders in the history of humanity.

It is probably the number one wonder of even the most faithful of believers.

If I am not mistaken the ones, reading this blog, have probably asked the same question as that woman in that prison.

With all I have done that is wrong and unkind in my life; how is it that the God of love can even be fond of me?  Because God certainly doesn’t approve or like my actions.

To believe in a God that loves us despite our thoughts, actions and behavior,  just doesn’t make sense to the human mind.

And yet it remains true.  

                                  God is a loving and forgiving God. 

                                      A God that remembers our sins no more.

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant ……³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31)