I am a parent.  Sometimes my son does things that really tick me off.  But I've thought about this a lot... is there anything that my son could do that would cause me to sentence him to an eternity of pain and suffering!?

I've thought about this pretty hard, but no! there is nothing. I love him too much!

What is the worst thing he could do?  Kill someone else I love?  Yes, and that would be really really bad.  But would I choose to torture him for eternity for this crime?.  Could I not find the least little bit of compassion to believe that fundamentally he still has a good soul and that he still needs my love and compassion?  I suppose some people come to hate their children but I cannot.

My point is this, if I, or other parents who are better then I, are at least this compassionate already, and I can imagine other parents being even better, then God must already be way way beyond this.  I mean, if there is a God (and yeah sometimes it seems like there isn't!) and if he has been alive for eternity, then he has to be much much better at compassion then I, or anyone else, or anything we can imagine.

I grew up with the idea of a punishing God.  One who judges harshly, condemns quickly, and punishes physically.  And at first I treated my son and step kids the same way.  But now this seems ridiculous and feels horrible.  As I found the courage to see myself as they saw me, and remembered what it felt like to be treated that way, I looked for, found, and worked hard to learn ways to raise them and teach them discipline without punishment, physical or emotional.  I was amazed, there are some great approaches to raising kids that nobody tells us anything about, and the results for me have been fantastic.  I now have a great relationship with my son.  Respect now grows between us that I never believed possible.  The rewards of treating him with respect and compassion are profoundly satisfying.

(reference: my tools for raising kids)

But God, some folks tell me, treats me the way I used to treat my son.  Hunh?!  What has happened here?  Have I grown past God?  Am I better at using compassion then he is??  Not bloody likely!  But if that didn't happen then the only other possibility is that God does not punish us, but instead uses infinite compassion and respect to guide us.  Why infinite?  Because that is how long he has been around.

"But what if God is not infinite?  What if he doesn't know everything?  What if he is like "Q" on Star Trek - The Next Generation?"

Then we clearly have the ability to grow past him.  And he is not "The God", but simply an "alien";  powerful, and maybe a lot of trouble, but someone who is our peer in at least some way.

And then you have to ask: who is it that this alien answers to?  Is there a God beyond them?  And this becomes the same question as before: is there an ultimate God or not?  Either there is a perfect Creator, or else everything, aliens we haven't yet met and all, are a big accident.  There are no Gods or powers in between that are really important - nothing in between that isn't some challenge that we humans are meant to understand or overcome.

Last of all, if there is a perfect Creator, could he have created us to be his toys?  Just for his amusement?  Or as some big experiment?  No.  A perfect Creator cannot be a child or a curious student, he would only have a perfect and profound reason for putting us here.

So why is it that we humans seem to be the ones that have to enforce God's rules?  "Thou shalt not kill" reads the commandment, but folks go on doing it, and getting away with it too.  No special events or miracles consistently occur to prevent our mass killing sprees.  Why this seeming lack of interest on God's part?  Why does he seem to sit idly by and just "watch"?

Again, while raising kids, I've found that letting them face the consequences of their own actions (up to a reasonable point) solves a lot more problems, and it solves them faster, than when I stick my nose in and "help out".  One child will come to me and say "she hit me!" and the other will give me that sheepish or nervous look.  But if I respond with indifference to the fighting and hold them both to a higher standard: "hey, y'all can work this out between yourselves using respect for each other", then after a little time they do tend to work it out themselves.

Whaddya bet God knows about this one already too?

So I've encouraged my kids to resolve their problems by themselves many times and now I've got a new feeling about it - one that I didn't expect...  I now have faith in their ability to work things out.  I have a new respect for them, and when they look at me it seems like they respect me a lot more also.  I'll bet God has this kind of respect for us in spades.

"Hey, but up above you said up to a reasonable point!  Where is this point where you step in and take control?"  Yeah, I don't have the will power to let my kids run in the street and "learn" that cars are dangerous.  But then I've also got a fear that my son might die before he learns to be careful.  What is important is that this is my fear that interferes with his destiny.  I want very much for him to stay alive, too much to let him face all his consequences on his own.  And this is probably a bit selfish of me.  God on the other hand, I don't think has this selfish need, nor does he have any fears, nor does he care too much about what happens to our bodies.  From his perspective, I'm sure it's quite simply that "humans will be humans".

"Ok but absolute faith and respect is a pretty big chunk to swallow.  I don't feel God treats me like that." 

Yeah, I didn't either until one night I was staring up into space thinking about how it just goes on and on forever, feeling really small and worried like maybe I didn't matter much at all.  But then it hit me; maybe God made it all infinite so that I would never run out of things to learn?  Maybe he believes I have the potential, or clearly that we all have the potential, to learn it all!  Suddenly I felt a wave of respect wash through me.  What a challenge, what an opportunity!  Maybe infinity is a good thing after all.

But to learn everything?  I mean who would think that we humans can figure it all out?  Well, maybe a perfect being; one that has perfect faith in us.

What's the chance that God throws temper tantrums like a 2 year old?  What is the chance that he acts on impulses of vengeance and lashes out against us?  Not bloody likely!  I mean we are talking about at least a multi-billion year old highly evolved being here.  These emotional things are what we humans struggle with, not God.  For example:

I've found that it is really really helpful to think about all my feelings about God after I found these.  I used to have many habitual things that I would say in my head when bad stuff happened.  Many of them came from the way I thought "the world treated me" like " the world is cruel" or "life is unfair".  But all of these needed to change once I realized I had a really twisted and stupid vision of what God was.  It took a lot of work, but my world is now much friendlier and brighter as a result.  This is some of the most profound spiritual work you can do: to redefine God.

prejudice (prèj´e-dîs) noun
1. a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. See synonyms at PREDILECTION. b. A preconceived preference or idea.
2. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
3. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion.
4. Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.

By now I'm sure you are getting the drift of my argument: there are mistakes (even honest ones) that a perfect God could never make.  In concept 3 I argue that a perfect God cannot get angry, and in concepts 1 and 2 that he must be raising his children with a respect and compassion way beyond anything we can imagine.  Here I'm going to argue that a perfect God treats each one of his children with equal respect and compassion, and that either we are all his children, or none of us are.  A good parent does not play favorites, a perfect God couldn't.

Some parents favor some of their children.  Some kids are so annoying that we have to force ourselves to offer them the respect and love that we gladly give to the more pleasant children.  But these are our failings (through impatience, frustration, and fears of what our kids will become or how other people will react to us and our kids), it is not the child's failing.  A perfect God could not fail in this way, nor care about other people's approval the way we do.

In all of the definitions of prejudice above, some human failing is the cause of the prejudice. 

• judgment formed beforehand without knowledge or examination of [all] the facts
• the holding of unreasonable beliefs
• irrational suspicion or hatred
• premature conviction of people

Allow me to add a few more:

• rejection of people because they don't know enough
• rejection of people because they believe something different

In every case of prejudice I have encountered there has always been hatred or anger involved at some level.  And then beneath that, fear.  If you insist that God favors some of us, then you must also agree that there are people on earth who are better than God, because some of us have learned to treat others with great equality.

If there is a God, he must have some perfect reason for us to be here.  But he also must have some really great way to motivate us to fulfill that purpose.  I wonder what it could be....

How do we motivate our kids?  Candy, toys, money...  Does commanding them work?  Threatening them?  Revoking privileges?  When are they motivated more, when something is interesting, exciting, pleasing, or when something is boring, dull, or painful.  When are we motivated more??

Would a perfect being use fear to motivate us?  That is pretty cruel.  Would he use his authority and ignore or demean our personal interests?  Or would he create a system where personal interests are the motivation!

At the bottom of this page is a link that explores how at least one of these motivations might work.

How old must you be to experience God?  How much must you know or understand?  Do you have to be able to read to know God?  Do you have to be able to hear to understand God?  What language must you speak?  Must you speak that language fluently in order to understand?

These are all quite silly questions once they are put into view.  Language is something humans developed to communicate with each other, a perfect creator would create a much more reliable and much less complicated way to communicate with each of their children.  They would have a perfect way and it would work no matter if we are deaf, blind, uneducated, illiterate, or completely cut off from the entire world.

Again this must be an all or nothing deal: God's ideas about how to deal with the important problems each of us face are probably available to each of us at every moment, maybe it is up to us to learn to see, trust, and use them.

And there is always free will.  We must be free to misunderstand, and free to ignore these ideas.  That is how we learn.  Get an idea, try it out, face reality.  Clearly learning things the hard way is an option available to us at every opportunity!  We cannot force our children to learn things exactly right the first time, nor can we expect them to learn it all quickly.  It is a process.  Their process.  And our learning is our process.  God is undoubtedly more patient than we are.

Every one of us is different.  Each one has had a different set of experiences, each one has come to different conclusions, and each one of us carries a different truth about spiritual matters.  We all learn things in a different order and in different ways.  Just as it makes no sense for all of us to be at the same point on the path, nor does it make sense for all of us to be on the same path.  I liken it to many people approaching a stadium from all sides.  No path is "The One Correct Path" because it depends on where you parked your car.

In reality however the paths are not straight either, but wind around, and sometimes lead away from the stadium, and likely often go in circles too.  But free will guarantees this!  We get to choose to go backwards, get stuck, and go in circles.  It must be this way, how else could we learn what happens when we go backwards?

So now suppose a soul wanders all around during their life and never makes it to the stadium?  Is their life and experience lost?  I believe not.  Because if they came into contact with anyone during their life, they had an influence on that person and something was likely learned or something was traded, even if it was ever so tiny.  Thus I suspect that it is impossible for anyone to have absolutely zero affect on everyone else.  And thus everyone always adds something to the world - even if they only leave faint tracks in the sand.