What I Think It Means to Love God (Or the Universe, Or the Unnamed If You Don’t Like The Word God)
I’ve never met a God-loving person in all of my life.
Of course, it depends on what I mean by ‘God-loving’. (There are a lot of people out there who don’t believe in God at all and that’s okay [my beloved brother is one of them and the majority of people I met in China also didn’t believe in God and many others I’ve met scattered around the world, so please don’t take offense by my saying this].)
What does ‘God-loving’ mean to me?
It means to see the dark side in you that you see in other people. It’s to recognize that you are not more righteous than anyone. It’s to have an extensive circle of compassion; which means that it’s not only to have compassion for people whom you share similarities with (or whom you perceive as such) but also for people whom you have a hard time accepting. It’s to believe that everyone deserves to be helped. It’s to still offer help to those who strongly oppose you. It’s to judge people on an individual basis, not lump certain individuals together into one just because they possess the same passport or were born in the same country, the same city, share the same native language. Loving God means to individualize humans and to humanize their good and bad sides.
When people have told me that I was like a good Christian or a good Muslim, why not I read the gospels? To tell me that I could easily be a Muslim, why not embrace Islam? isn’t loving God. Suggesting that I open up to the idea that Jesus Christ is The Holy Savior isn’t loving God. When you don’t love people as they are, then it’s not loving God. When there is a subconscious distance between two people because one person isn’t a believer in a certain religion, when it’s been stated that there isn’t the same possible closeness, the same bond then I don’t think that this is loving God. Everyone is the way they are because of God. Everything is the way it is because of God. It’s not caring when anyone feels that they have to treat someone differently because they are not from the same cultural background or don’t read the same holy books or don’t know anything about the same foods or how to behave in certain social settings.
How often do people step into the shoes of a person who has grown up in a completely different place, who has grown up with completely different values and take the time to understand where the person has come from? Not often.
No, it’s either that people just don’t care or they don’t have time or they are too focused on working and earning prestige. If you haven’t seen through their eyes, felt the very emotions of someone who has come from a place unlike anything you have ever known in order to make sense of why certain values are important to the person, no matter how strange, then you don’t love God.
I state this definition but I don’t speak of myself at all as God-loving. I’m not a fully God-loving person.
People don’t help each other enough on the street (it could be something as simple as moving aside when someone approaches, or recognizing the right of way of pedestrians, or not walking three to five abreast on the sidewalk with your friends acting as if you own the sidewalk, etc.). Being God-loving is certainly not driving aggressively and not disregarding ambulances that need to pass. That is pure selfishness. People don’t see other people enough. People don’t appreciate, encourage, notice others enough.
It is not God-loving when you don’t remember that you, too, have the ability to fall into doing bad things. I don’t feel that anyone should be condemned for doing bad things without the person doing the condemning to not remember first that they, too, have the potential to do something bad.
‘God-loving’ means to keep in mind that everyone learns at a different pace, that no one naturally knows anything, that no one knows everything that anyone has experienced in a day which means that there are no grounds in putting anyone down. Loving God means to not sneering at, not blaming, not question, not stay angry at someone or something that exists. Loving God means to not have ill feelings, or at least not to hold any ill feelings so make sure to stay away from anything that builds negative energy in you.
Criticism, fear, making assumptions (especially in instances when it’s easy not to), resenting people (especially when they can’t help you because they can’t) aren’t God-loving actions and it’s certain that everyone has done all of the former. No one has reached that state where there’s equal love for everyone.
No one has the same kind regard for everyone.
Everyone has blind conditions that they feel every person should follow without exception though isn’t it more just to stop and think hard and long enough about one’s background in order to better assess the person who isn’t able to carry out the correct conditions? It’s not God-loving to insist that everyone perform the same conditions when people are much more complicated than that.
Dismissing people as groups isn’t God-loving. Allowing yourself to make a conclusion about anyone based on what you have heard about them is absolutely not God-loving.
Yes, I vent quite a lot. Yes, I tend to broach the negative aspects of places, individuals, companies, and cultural practices; because they influence me to consider more about what could possibly be better or what creates harmony. Yes, I am often neutral or between neutral or down but I choose to be this way.
I speak often about the present situation around me in Istanbul (to be fair, when I was in China, I used to read the China Daily newspaper and used to have only negative criticism about how the government there regarded human life and when I was in Russia, it was the same thing; I had negative feedback on how the political atmosphere felt there); I often feel the melancholic atmosphere anywhere I walk in the city and when I tell people who have never been here about it, they point out why I was still there and how I could possibly ‘teach people that didn’t make me feel good’. I think the ‘people that don’t make me feel good’ statement needs to be clarified. As most of the people I associate with don’t observe the Muslim faith and they know that Turkey is a Muslim-majority country, they immediately more or less wonder why I have stayed in Istanbul for as long as I do and wouldn’t it be better if I went somewhere else, especially when many unfortunate circumstances have occurred during my stay here as a tourist and as a temporary resident. When there are bad things, there are good things. Yes, there is a lot wrong with Istanbul but I don’t think it’s fair to feel less sympathy for Turkish people just because they aren’t perceived as familiar due to differences in cultural practices and mentality. To dismiss Turkish people quickly because of their history (part of it controversial and large parts of it transformations in regards to religion) and for carrying themselves differently isn’t God-loving. To find no inclination in attempting to see unfamiliar people eye-to-eye is far from loving God at all. Letting hatred, a strong dislike brew and letting this remain isn’t God-loving.
Being God-loving isn’t losing hope in someone because they don’t see what you see, it’s to embrace them unconditionally when they don’t see what you see. It’s to come to an understanding that they may not see what you see and that’s okay — for there is a reason for how people have come to think the way they do. To insist that your way is right, to wonder how on earth certain people believe what they believe isn’t God-loving. Feeling incredulity as to how someone can possibly think absurdly about something isn’t God-loving.
I feel incredulous a lot inside but I let this feeling die down and accept that everyone has come upon and are walking on certain paths for a reason. There’s a cause. There are influences. There may be psychological turmoil. I have to let things be, let them stand. Of course, I won’t let abuse stand but, at the same time, there needs to be a lot of space for knowing that one’s life consists of many diverged paths, many straight routes and then a lot of curves and turns.
Maybe we can try to be God-loving most of the time. (Or universe-loving as we are all one with the universe and mysterious forces we can never know — even in death perhaps.)
