Misunderstanding of God.


We tend to take on those traits that characterize the god we believe in. This is why I oppose absolutist views of the Christian’s God. Those who understand a god as absolute, tend to emphasize on absolute divine sovereignty, that is, that the god exercises complete control of all things. They also emphasize power and the divine right to use this power in any way the god might choose.

The followers of an absolute god tend to exercise full sovereignty over their churches, they seek to control the lifestyle of the group, and power is exercised to maintain this sovereignty and control the behavior of the believers. Everything becomes inflexible, unchallengeable, and permanent in form and content. I’ve been in many Christian churches in the past seventy years and too often this has been the pattern I have observed.

It is such a misunderstanding and thus, misrepresentation of the biblical God that I am opposing in this blog. I am motivated by this widespread misunderstanding, this misrepresentation of God.

I readily grant there are biblical foundations upon which such a view of God can be built. In the Bible, God regularly exercises his sovereign power. The ultimate issue is whether to give God’s mighty power the preeminence or whether, in the total biblical message, God’s love is given priority over all else. I am convinced that God is love, holy love, and that all other attributes of God are subordinated in the service of that love.

Love is a personal relationship, and the Christian community should be relate-ive, relational, that is, a community characterized by the obvious exercise of holy love.

This is the basic rational for what I am blogging.

No Absolutes

When I say there are no absolutes, I am aware that I don't intend the common usage of the word. In its root meaning, however, the word means, "away from, separated from, apart from anything at all." It means, "non-relate-ive. It means "related to nothing, dependent on nothing, connected to nothing.

Nothing exists in such a totally disconnected way except as an abstract idea in a human mind. We can mentally abstract things from the real world (a world of connections and relationships) and think of them as totally separate from all else. When we leave the world of our ideas, however, we can name nothing that is not related to something else.

What about God? I believe in the biblical God who is known as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is not a solitary absolute. God was never lonely. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. Both love the Spirit. The Spirit loves them both.

The Divine Relativity

Again, I want to make it clear that I am using relative and absolute in a special sense, a sense that grows directly out of the root meaning of the terms.

For me, relative means related, related to something; it means relate-ive in nature, relational in essence. And since I believe that everything is related to something else, I believe that everything is relate-ive–relative–and cannot be rightly understood apart from relationship.

God is relate-ive in essence, because God is essentially trinitarian: Father, Son, Spirit in an eternal relation of love. Love is neither an idea, a principle, a force, nor a law. It is a relationship. God is love; God is relative.

I do not use relative in the sense that says the meaning or value of anything is up to each of us to decide for our self. I do not mean that everyone has their own truth or their own definition right and wrong. Although in one sense I believe everything is relative, I completely reject relativism as it is commonly understood.

I will deal with the way I use “absolute” in the next blog.