I was watching a TV about a man who killed his entire family. He said that he had a religious experience and it had changed his life. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he said something that made it impossible for me to believe him. He said that God had forgiven him all his deeds and forgotten them.
If this man truly knew God, then how could he possibly think that God would forget anything that he had done? I cannot judge this man and I don’t want this post to be about him. I want it to be about the idea of what God know about me.
I just can’t believe that God would ever forget anything about me. It has something to do with the idea of God being timeless. God does see me at one moment in time. He sees me as I am at every moment in my life. When I am at my best, when I am at my lowest, when I have been virtuous, and when I have sinned. He accepts me as I am. Of course, He forgives my sins, but He also loves me because of all of who I am and part of that is being a flawed human being that sins. To forget that part of me would be to deny who I really am, and I just cannot believe that God would do that; He loves me too much.
I guess that’s the hard part of faith. The simple idea of faith is to believe that once a person accepts God into their heart everything is going to be good, all sins are forgiven, and God will be watching over that person’s life so that it will be blessed. Yet, that sounds like a fairy tale. It is like a wish: sort of the idea of Heaven being a beautiful place up in the clouds where the streets are paved with gold and the good will receive a reward for their morality.
Real faith is acceptance of the world as it is and myself as I am. There’s good and evil, virtue and sin, etc. There’s no reward or punishment when I die. This life is it and I need to be thankful for every single minute of it because I don’t know what is coming next. And yes, God loves me, and He forgives me, but He sees me as a flawed being that will never be perfect. I will struggle all my life and I’m never going to get it right. He loves that about me. It’s wonderful that I can be that way and still experience this life and be His child. There’s no fairy tale to it. I just have faith that whatever comes, He is right there with me. He doesn’t forget any of us. He never will.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
