God's Goodness

 

An experience from last night reminds me quite powerfully that it is objectively possible for the goodness of God to fill a person.

Those who reject God will never have this experience; it is not that God does not want them to, but the goodness of God cannot fill a person who does not love God first. Those who deserve God get God; and those who deserve themselves get themselves. It is very easy to make a mistake between the two, because the human mind is weak and always favors itself first. This is its constant habit.

God could easily send those who prefer themselves His goodness, but they don't want it; they prefer their own goodness. Because all of creation is allowed to choose on this matter, their choice is acceptable; yet it carries its own consequences, and the first is that the goodness of God does not fill them. Without that, life is as nothing; and yet it's so powerful that it seems to be something great and meaningful in and of itself. People fall under its spell and believe that first, compounding the problem. This is the paradox. Once tasted, life is nothing without gods goodness; yet without that taste, life is everything unto itself. Herein lies one of the secret meanings of putting your treasure up in heaven. Life carries its own lesson; it will corrupt everything if you leave life to itself. It’s not enough to believe in God; by itself, even that can corrupt. It is necessary to know God, to be filled with God’s goodness. To come to a moment when this is the only thing that matters and that you would give your life in order to have.

It takes many years to humble yourself enough, to ask enough questions and to suffer enough, so that you destroy the parts of yourself that are hardened against the love and goodness of God. When, in the old testament, it says that Pharaoh  "hardened his heart,” it means that he did the opposite of this. He used his self-importance and his thinking and his power to reject God and His will. He was repeatedly offered the chance to do the right thing out of love, and refused. He put love of himself before love of others. 

This is a simple lesson not about religious politics or temporal power, but about how human beings care for one another. If we don't care for others in the moment—not in our imagination, but in the moment—God's goodness will not fill us.

God's goodness is an eternal gift: it lies outside of time and man’s affairs. It comes with the inflow, the arrival of the influence of God. Many destructive forces have learned how to imitate this experience; and many are the paths whereby a man can twist the ways of God into his own pretzels.

I was reminded earlier this morning of the numerous times in which Jeanne de Salzmann said, "the only thing you can change is your attitude." This is exactly true; and yet the one thing that human beings refuse to change above all else is their attitude. People love their attitudes even more than they love themselves, even though it’s commonplace for almost all of their attitudes to be imparted to their Being through infections, destructive ideas imported from the outer world. Spiritual practices emphasize discrimination and mindfulness because of this; but few understand how to discriminate with all three of their parts. Folk think with their minds that discrimination with the mind is enough; but the mind is far too easily deceived to be relied on in this action. It needs guidance from feeling; and the exact description of corrupted feeling comes from the phrase "the hardening of the heart." Feeling that loves itself is just as destructive as the mind that loves itself. The body that loves itself also brings this problem with it.

There are some men who teach of God's goodness, but not many. We live in a world that worships the goodness of man; and you can easily see from man's deeds how much goodness is in him.

Yet I insist, as I did before, that God's goodness can fill us; and with it, all the love and compassion that God is composed of. This is not without its price; and its price is our attitude towards ourselves and others, which must be sacrificed in order to reach a new understanding. The one thing we do not want to put on the altar as an offering is everything we already believe; and so we do not make a room in our souls for God's goodness to enter. Without that place, there is no room at the inn, and nothing new can be born in us. We’ve already filled every room with our own attitudes. The only place left for God to enter is in a lowly place, a place that is taken for granted and far too easily forgotten.

Last night, a very personal and destructive insult delivered to me by an unfeeling someone who poses as trustworthy, sank deep into the flesh of my bones. It reminded me of how we so casually betray one another, as if it were normal and acceptable. 

I worked on it for some time from within and realize that I have to let this go, because I am not really that different in the end. 

While I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep, the inflow became active. God's goodness came and filled me and reminded me again that it is possible to love, despite betrayal. This is something that Christ taught us on the cross, and that we ought to remember always, because He was willing to give His life for love. Not the love of things or power, but the pure and unadulterated love of God for creation, which filled Him even as he died in the same way that it filled Him as He lived. 

We are here, like all of God’s creation, as vessels created to receive that goodness. 

I have said before that we are vessels into which the world flows; and this is an essential inner understanding, because it marks our place in God's creation as receivers of His bounty and goodness. Yet it can equally be said that we are vessels into which God's goodness flows – if we let it. To know that goodness is to be reduced to the smallest thing; and to be reduced to the smallest thing is an introduction to the greatest action of the heart, which must lead first in any path to understanding.

These are my thoughts for this morning.

Hoping that you find yourself in good relationship today,

warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.