A Letter Exchange
Ben, January 21, 1982
To: "GOOD NEWS":
It appears that God deliberately puts people in roles and circumstances that evoke the question, "Where is your love for Me?" Four such situations readily come to mind:
1) When God orders that Adam and Eve be driven out of the Garden, momentarily confusing the Archangels,
2) When Satan puts the question to God concerning Job, "He likes You because of all the toys You give him",
3) Peter was "put on the spot" by Jesus when asked whether he loved him three times; it must have reminded him of the 3 "I don't know him's" he uttered previously,
4) The woman who cleaned Jesus' feet with her tears. The fourth example is as much a "setup" as the first. When someone is given a social role as a moral outcast, segregated and demeaned by others (the Pharisee loudly reminded everyone of the woman's role), then touched by someone like Jesus, the emotions explode like fireworks. But it is a role that calls for intense pressure and isolation. In effect, someone cast in that role by God is an emotional time-bomb. It only requires a fuse like Jesus to set it off.
My question is why God created these roles which coalesce around the question of love? To exaggerate the question, why should God care how one loves Him? He knows that in a lonely universe, commanding people to love Him, i.e. "Here is the first command, now do it" would not cement two parties in love. What is the significance of the question to God? Does it have anything to do with His "prior life" when He was alone? Does the Job case illustrate in any way the kind of relationships God was "considering" when He was speculating about a family?
I am sure that it is "good" for us to love God, but is this the only reason? Could not Job have reversed the question, in other words, "Without me, Job, the question as to how You, God, are loved, is meaningless". Bold and cheeky as my assertion may seem (and I shudder to really ask it ), God's universe collapses, He fails (really I know He cannot fail) if I or you, or anyone do not love Him. We touch Him at points, nothing or no one else can (which is what you said in the past letter). So I am back to my first question- we are under intense pressure to love Him; why?
Concerning Job, Satan twisted the question around. But God scripted Satan- a robot cannot act on its own. Satan voiced out loud "for God" what everyone thinks about their friends, "I wonder if they like me for what I am?" Job was a parameter in an argument or proof; Satan the prompter. But the whole thing was set up by God before time began. God was "searching" Job for love but He never indicated to Job why He should love Him. Job just accepted the supposition that, yes, he should love God beyond all else. He never questioned God on the fundamental point -"You want me to love You... why"? Peter accepted the same thing. He assumed -no argument given -that he should love Jesus.
It appears that the first commandment is for God's own good- His being preceded ours "in time". When two people marry, it must be (not being married I cannot confirm this suspicion) for the good of both parties. If one puts the other under intense pressure to prove (to live up to the demands of marriage) their love, the other may just turn around and reverse the equation, "My love?" I don't mean to ask the question in such a way that God can "produce proofs" of His love for us; almost every sermon preached throughout time begins and ends with that anyway. The inquiry is really why He created a series of roles dealing with the question that really serves His benefit. In other words, I know what His commands for me are. But since love is a "compact" (contract), surely I have some demands on His Being -or commands for Him. You could say, "Ben, He commands you NOT!" Fine, then love can be "ordered" out of someone and we can dispense with the pressure-cooker roles.
Yours, Ben
Response, February 9, 1982
Dear Ben,
I am not happy at all with my life in this world. A family only serves as a diversion to keep me busy. Like Adam, I am given a task of tending my portion of His garden. (All of us are "plants"). I am inadequate as a father, and I feel like the brother and caretaker of my children that I really am. Marriage is something that must be worked at or cultured to make it thrive. No two people are a perfect match continually, because time and new experiences modify their behavior and outlook. Tolerance and patience levels may rise and fall. But if we can live with the good advice and wisdom of God, we will come out fine in the end. I am distressed sporadically, and there are times when I wonder how much longer I can endure the shallowness and superficial dramas of this life, while knowing it is all a masquerade.
I do not like some of this vanity we have been subjected to neither do I appreciate the negativeness of this exercise. While those of us on earth suffer learning little from our "acts", the "Watchers" receive the greatest educational benefit being "made perfect" by seeing our "stripes" and "washing" in the blood of our expense. We are an instruction and a proverb, a sacrifice for them. I do believe God is wiser than I, although I question the "good" in some of our more horrendous experiences which to me are "unnecessary excesses". In my heart with the wisdom of my limited vantage point, I know I would have done things differently if I were God. However I am certain that He knows more about His nature and hence, our nature, than I do. He is the best psychiatrist and psychologist, not me. I hate to think that there is some "quirk" in our nature which would lead us into "problems" in future eons without the "benefit" of lessons learned from the most hideous experience excesses. For example, what was the necessity of certain bizarre excesses committed in German experiments with prison camp Jews? What profit to heaven is there in slow torture of a human being? I have seen pictures of the starving dying and the dead. It was gruesome! World poverty and starvation is useful in accelerating the buildup in numbers of those entering the Kingdom, but the process is maddeningly ridiculous and coarse. And to strengthen devils so they may do more terrible things to the righteous than they previously could borders on wickedness. The thought arises that God needs to learn how to keep His own "beattitudes"! (But these are merely instances where He as a Scientist heats up His experiment by testing it with acid). Even so, while such instances can be appreciated when viewed from a scientific standpoint, it does nothing to increase my love of His technic. More often than not the victim's righteousness suffers as in Job's case. When I am the victim of such charades, I get no profit from it, just "double-crosses", spots, and wrinkles. We are aware that devils are perverse and wild destroyers. Is it necessary to prove that their madness knows no limit? I do not believe that we as children of God are difficult to teach... God simply does not have to have a problem if He does not want one. And what appears to be a problem in the minds of men is a deliberate "put-on" by His Omnipotence! Devils are the cause of hard-heartedness in earthly men, but in heaven His students are free of them... so why the need for "excesses"?... when it is totally impossible for heavenly beings to do them! Why permit them to occur over and over again? Pain, shock, and anxious questions are the resultants! I do not need excesses to know that sin is exceedingly sinful. I have also questioned the "need" for making the devil in the first place, when we could have learned from God-made educational "movies", not starring "us" or our brethren. A vicarious experience may not teach the same lesson to the degree that an actual experience might, but some things men have suffered, no man should ever have suffered my opinion (not God's). I have seen grossly deformed children, "monsters", in a research hospital in my medical training. Why did the Germans have to have human-skin lamp shades in their scene on the earth-stage? (God knows I would have done things differently if I had the controls!) Since a demon is really a super-sophisticated anti-God and "hurdle" for the earthly phase of our education, he really has no intelligence because he is a "machine" exhibiting a programmed opposing response. There is absolutely no possibility of teaching them anything positive. Therefore God is really the "doer" of the "negative" in this "scientific" educational process. He knows something about the psychology of "masses" (we number into multi-billions) that I do not know. But I content myself in my place, knowing He is "just" doing all these things to Himself. I have seen too many examples of His orderliness and super-brilliant Wisdom to think He makes mistakes and is going through "unnecessary extremes" to educate us. What I fear most is in my mind that there is a "quirk" in our mass-psychology which requires "settling" by "extreme" earthly "exercises" in vanity! I cannot advise you on how to cope for the duration of your earthly sojourn. I am in "the same boat" with you!
Regarding the "love-roles", it is our nature, God's and ours, to want love. When He was alone that was TERRIBLE! You do not want to experience that kind of loneliness or anything nearly like it. Men experience only a smattering of what it was like and then, only for short periods of time. We are always around other beings and creatures. He was "poverty-struck" in the beginning with nothing but Himself. At the same time He was rich because of the magnificence and excellent potential of His mind. Friends love; friends remove loneliness; rejection by friends hurts. We (collectively) NEED friends and therefore love. Thus, the First Great Command expresses the First Great Need of the FIRST ONE...love! Multiplying dramas in every earthly phase to tell that need is to benefit every rising class of heavenly students as they "learn of Me". Being loved fills or begins to fill the First Great Vacuum and brings joy to Him and brings great joy to each of us. Look to your own heart for answers, Ben, because your real nature, barring any demonic influences on your flesh, is just like His! Observe:
Ode of Solomon 8:2,14-16 ... "Let your love be multiplied from the heart and even to the lips... Love me with affection, ye who love: For I do not turn away my face from them that are mine; For I know them, and before they came into being I took knowledge of them, and on their faces I set my seal", Ode of Solomon 3:2-8, "And his members are with him. And on them do I stand, and he loves me: For I should not have known how to love the Lord, if He had not loved me. For who is able to distinguish love, except the one that is loved? I love the Beloved, and my soul loves Him: And where His rest is, there also am I; and I shall be no stranger, for with the Lord Most High and merciful there is no grudging. I have been united to Him, for the Lover has found the Beloved".
Regarding Job's case, I think the kind of love God wanted from His children was amply illustrated in the beginning. Job showed adamant love and loyalty for God under extreme conditions. Later the devil pierced through Job's logic and "challenges" resulted. If Job had known then what we know now, his words might have been different. I notice that you and I are perilously close to a "reverse" Job's case, where we have that knowledge and are suffering similarly but in a different, milder way. (Father, please do not add to our grief!! Being down in this pit is too much for our spirits)! And yes, it is "good" for us to love God. He has His needs, and we need Him for everything including our existence. Go to the Acts of John concerning the "Revelation of the Mystery of the Cross".
Acts of John 100,101, "For so long as you do not call yourself mine, I am not what I am; but if you hear me, you also as a hearer shall be as I am... and I shall be what I was, when you are as I am with myself; for from me, you are what I am ...Let me have what is mine; what is yours you must see through me; but me you must truly see- not that which I am, (as) I said, but that which you as my kinsman are able to know".
I think if Job could have formulated a reverse "love question", he would have gotten the answer, "Yes! Without you, Job, love of, by and for Me is meaningless"! Because He needs love, we do too for we are like Him in that regard. Again you are right in likening our love relationship with God to that of a marriage. You do have demands and expectations of Him, as all men do in one form or another. He hears men imploring, begging, and hoping for certain things... like benefits from His love and promises. He will and does fulfill all the "demands" beyond our wildest dreams... in Heaven, not here where the inhabitants want it and need it most. This life in the flesh is specifically designated for our negative experience and our first stage of life. He is well aware that men do not like the "hell" they experience down here, but He will not deter from His purpose in shooting us through it!