God is kind

Finally, some good news, courtesy of Julian of Norwich.

Kindness is not the same thing as niceness.  As we've seen, the nice god is really not benevolent but is a creation of our own needs and often vindictive as well.  For Julian, kindness is "benevolence and the nature of a thing, and the relationship between things (think "kin" here)." 

"God is kind in his being: that is to say, that goodness that is kind, it is God.  He is ground, he is the substance, he is the very same thing that is kindness, and he is very father and mother of kind.  And all kinds that he has made to flow out of him to work his will, shall be restored and brought again into him by the salvation of man through the working of grace." 

God's kindness is rooted in his Trinitarian life:

"'By the endless assent of the full accord of all the Trinity, the mid-person would be ground and head of this fair kind, out of whom we are all come, in whom we are all enclosed, into whom we shall all go; in him finding our full heaven in everlasting joy by foreseeing purpose of all the blessed Trinity from without beginning; for before he made us he loves us; and when we were made we loved him; and this is a love made of the kindly substantial goodness of the Holy Ghost, mighty because of the might of the Father, and wise in mind of the wisdom of the Son; and thus is man's soul made by God and in the same point knit to God...'

And the revelation of this love in history is the cross."

Our sermon this Sunday was a ode to the nice god, given by a guest preacher who was a former youth group leader in the 1950's.  Such a powerful passage, and such a horrible explaining away of it.  God just wants us to get our priorities straight.  The cross is not about sacrifice.  The cross does not save us.  Our own faith saves us.  We have to be more compassionate, blah blah, and more semi-Pelagian crap (when he quoted Borg, I knew we were in trouble).  Last week, I was (for work-related reasons) at a Presbyterian seminary, and heard that (and I quote) "we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God" but that the nice god loves us, etc. etc.  (The preacher also said being Reformed was more of an attitude than a theological stance, which was amusing.)

So I've had it up to here with the nice god, who is "the rope that binds, the gag that silences Jesus - but always in Jesus' name...This kind God is the only kind of 'god' that is worthy of our praise.  The nice god isn't even a close second."