Screw Your God, *I* Love You

Today’s talk is by Brian K. Taylor. There was nothing really offensive or revelatory in this talk, but I still found things on which to comment because this talk made me think about the God that I believe exists.
Thankfully, we have been blessed with clear vision and understanding of our true identity from the beginning: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,”7
I think a lot about how we are made in God’s image and how us humans are in God’s likeness. I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God anymore, so it’s not my body that is made in His/Her image.
I think this phrase is more about how I “work” and the relationship between my spirit, my body, other people, the physical world, etc. I seek to learn how God “works” and thereby understand the rules/laws by which I function. I then seek to operate and exist within those constraints and notice how the God-like/Christ-like parts of me manifest in this life.
Jen, who just days before stood and recited, “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us,”13 now questioned, “How could He love me?”
My response to Jen would be, “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t think we believe in the same God, because my God can’t help but love me. But look… if your God doesn’t love you anymore because you killed a person in a car crash, I don’t care.
I love you. I want to be with you forever. And I don’t care what your God has to say about that. Your God can stop loving you because you killed someone. That’s fine. That’s His deal, though.
I choose to love you. Full stop. My love isn’t conditional on whether or not I believe in a God that still loves you. I will defy that God in order to love you.”
she says, “pleading with God. … Then I began to believe the words.” This belief allowed the Savior to begin mending her wounded soul.
The God I know was mending her long before she began to believe. Healing is not predicated on our believing it is possible. It happens regardless. I think this is one of the parts of us that is like God.
When I cut myself shaving, my body (which is like God’s) heals itself. It doesn’t matter whether I have faith in that healing. My body just does it’s thing and doesn’t give a crap how I feel about it.
I think that’s like God. God does God’s thing because God can’t help but do it. That’s the way God is built. That’s the way God works. And I think humans are like that.
No matter what I do, I can’t really stop my own growth, my own healing. I can’t screw things up so badly that I won’t move forward. It’s just the way I work. I think it always happens because I have parts of myself that are made in God’s image.
So, no, I don’t believe belief is a prerequisite for healing. That happens no matter what. However, our belief or attitude or sight can allow us to see opportunities for healing and can also facilitate it.
But healing is always there because God is always there. God doesn’t care about my belief in healing any more than my skin does. It just fixes itself.
I love the God of my fathers,34 “the Lord God Almighty,”35 who weeps with us in our sorrows, patiently chastens our unrighteousness, and rejoices when we seek to “give away all [our] sins to know [Him].”36
Here, Taylor talks about how he loves the God of his fathers. I am thankful that I was able to stop trying to worship the God of my fathers, the God that requires belief to begin mending my soul and causes me to question whether He loves me when I make mistakes.
I like the God I worship now, the one that does Their thing without caring about little old me. I love my God who has boundaries, who isn’t dependent on me and my actions/beliefs before choosing to be God and do what They want. It’s so freeing to be a child of that God. God is free to be God, and I am free to be me.
