I regularly correspond with a handful of Evangelical pastors, missionaries, and evangelists who are having doubts about their faith. While some of them have deconverted — albeit secretly — others are caught in no-man’s land — the space between belief and unbelief. As any of these doubters will tell you, I make no effort to convert them to atheism. I am far more concerned with helping them work through their doubts, fears, and questions. Most of all, I want to provide them a safe place to honestly and openly say what’s on their minds. They know that I once was where they are now. They also know that whatever they tell me will be kept in the strictest of confidence.
Earlier today, a man who, up until recently, spent most of his adult life holding revival meetings in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, sent me a text about God and his love for us. I asked him if I could share his text with you, and he said yes.
I Am God and I Love You So Much
I am God. God is love. I love you so much.
I love you so much that I set you up to fail.
I love you so much that I taught a snake how to talk, tempt and deceive.
I love you so much that I created most of you knowing you’d reject me.
I love you so much that I made infinite torture the price of your finite rejection.
I love you so much that I’ll give all who reject me a special body that will never die and never stop feeling ultimate pain.
I love you so much that I’ve made sexuality one of your most intense desires but one of your most forbidden actions.
I love you so much that I’ll let some of you be rich, powerful and comfortable while most will be poor, miserable and weak.
I love you so much that I’ll make my forgiveness and salvation one of the most obscure, secluded, exclusive, elusive, difficult, ancient, senseless, illogical and bizarre, argued, debated, opinionated, sadistic, divisive, repulsive, reject-able, laughable, unverifiable, irrational, emotional, and psychological things ever conceived.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you doubt me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you trust me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you stray from me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you are closer to me than to anyone.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you don’t serve me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you serve me faithfully.
I love you so much that I’ll make your suffering for ignoring me very real in this life.
I love you so much that I’ll make your rewards for walking with me only real in the next life.
I love you so much that I’ll kill your loved ones, destroy your life, ravage your body and make your best friends think it’s your fault, just to teach the devil a lesson.
I love you so much that I’ll make everything you need to know about me and my love available to you in an ancient, translated, revised, edited, copied, argued, debated, contradictory, violent, terrifying, depressing, ambiguous, bizarre, embarrassing book written by dozens of disagreeing men, spanning thousands of years.
I love you so much.
God is love.
I am God.
The post I Am God and I Love You So Much appeared first on The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser.