Brian’s Reflection: Friday, May 4, 2007


People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed,
revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

- Audrey Hepburn, actress, good-will ambassador,
born on this day, 1929 (She was 63 when she died)


People want to have happen to them everything that Audrey says - if they have any sense, any normal human longings and hopes. And people “invent” a God that meets those needs. Here, I am using “invent” in the “old” Elizabethan sense - to “go/find within”.

Oh, the guilt and the dark side comes out, of course. The gods/goddesses/God always have a dark side, a negative side. Look at Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, etc. Yahweh is often presented as murderous and revengeful. But this, I believe, is primarily an expression of the human anxiety about our own capacity for evil projected onto God.

God, in my view, is useless if God is just conceived as a policeman. The Universe doesn’t need a divine policeman - the unpleasant consequences of our behavior probably have more police power. I have never believed that Divine Anger accomplished anything essential in terms of human behavior. People may hesitate, but their hearts don’t change. And the Change of Heart is what God – Yahweh, anyway – desires.

I’d rather give over my life to restoring, renewing, reviving, reclaiming, redeeming. Like Audrey, I know how much I and all of us need it. The true God is the God Who loves in this way. “I will be with you always, even unto the end of the Ages.”

Brian+