Chapter 3: God Loves You as You Are

That God loves us all equally is perhaps the most difficult Christian conviction to grasp existentially, yet the most obvious to grasp logically. For the myriad factors that have made us “who we are”, also shape our responses to how our own lives unfold. My parishioner Rachel and her husband had no children; by the time I met her twenty years ago, both of them had severe health problems, from diabetes that required amputations for Bob, to Rachel’s own Parkinson’s disease. They struggled to remain in their own home, but with Bob’s death Rachel had to enter a nursing facility, where after losing virtually all her faculties, she died. Like so many others, she wrestled obsessively with the question of "Why Me?" But unlike many, she had a ready answer: God was punishing her for the sins and failures of her life. She was never able to articulate just what these were, but nothing could shake her Calvinist conviction that her misery reflected God’s justice. Existentially, she was unable to believe that God loved her.

Julia de Beausobre, imprisoned and tortured under Stalin, knew suffering of a different order, at the hands of licensed sadists. Later, she was asked how she survived.

It was simple really,” she said, “I tried to love my torturers; because if I loved them I would not be adding to the evil in the world by hating them. And if I loved them, it could just be that it might have some effect on them, reducing the evil they did and reducing the amount of evil in the world.

Hers was a logical calculus that grew directly from the Orthodox faith that had trained her to view suffering as “a thing of which something can be made.” And that something derived from the certainty that God loves both “the just and the unjust” equally. Tutu claims that we belittle God’s love for us when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the culture of achievement and “success.” Rachel was tragically caught in this very trap, while de Beausobre’s confrontation with evil and her determination to transform it, refusing to succumb to despair or hatred, matches Archbishop Tutu’s breath-taking claim that “the most unlikely person, the most improbable situation” is “transfigurable.” Both de Beausobre and Desmond Tutu invite us into the deep mystery of how it can be that “as much as God loves you, God equally loves your enemies”—the topic of our next chapter. [p. 41]

The Reverend Joan E. Fleming

Chapter 2: God’s Dream

“We are family, I got all my sisters and me. We are family, Get up everybody and sing”
~ “We are Family,” Sister Sledge

The above song played in my head the entire time I was reading Chapter Two of Bishop Tutu’s God Has Dream. In Chapter One, we heard that God believes in us, that we are His hands and feet in world, transfiguring and reconciling it to Him. In Chapter Two, Bishop Tutu shows us what that dream looks like. Simply put: God wants us to be His family. “I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, that My children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, My family.”

I was really struck by Bishop Tutu’s image of God’s family. I feel that his metaphor is appropriate and should make everyone pause and reflect on what a family looks like. I was especially moved in the ways that God’s family mimics my own (and everyone’s). We can’t pick our family. We don’t always agree. Sometimes we fight and argue. Families hold all things in common (I’m reminded of my father rolling his eyes whenever I would show up with a “new tie,” and by new tie, I mean a tie I borrowed from his closet). Above all, the image of family is essential to God’s Dream because it means that everyone, everywhere, regardless of differences, is interdependent. At the heart of God’s Dream, and at the heart of our place as his family, is a deep and essential need for relationships with other people. “The first law of our being,” says Bishop Tutu, “is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation.”

I love Bishops Tutu’s introduction and use of the word ubuntu (and not just because it’s my favorite Linux operating system). We are inextricably interconnected—for better or worse—and it is those connections that make us human—ubuntu. We have a tendency in the West, and especially in current streams of Christianity, to believe that we are on our own, that there is pride in “Rugged Individualism” (as Teddy Roosevelt called it), that “me” is more important than “we.” I grew up in a Christian tradition that focused on one’s individual, personal relationship with God; although I still believe there is value in some of those beliefs, I’m struck by how easily community and relationships fall apart when individuals become the focus at the expense of a community. Bishop Tutu reminds us that at the heart of Christianity, at the heart of humanity, is a family. God’s family. “The world is going to have to learn the fundamental lesson that we are made for harmony, for interdependence. If we are ever truly to prosper, it will be only together.”

Furthermore, Chapter two introduces the idea that God’s family is not limited to people. God made humans stewards of the world and its resources. We are as connected to nature as we are to other people. Thus, part of being God’s family is recognizing that the world around us is God’s family as well. Plants, trees, animals, all of nature are our extended family. And we, as God’s stewards, are responsible for it.

As we continue reading God Has a Dream, may God open your hearts to His dream. May God remind you that, although we want His love for ourselves, God’s love is for everyone and everything. May God expand your heart for His people and for his creation. Finally, may God give you a lasting spirit of ubuntu, a spirit that will transfigure the world for Him.

+ Benjamin B. Maddison