Catching Idle Butterflies

God's love and points to view

Because an event needs to be put to rest, and because I recently learned a few things that changed my perspective some, I decided to start afresh and write a different entry today. I considered making the previous entry private, and I may do so at a later date, but for now, you’re welcome to torture yourself if that’s your inclination.

Speaking of perspectives!

Does God love us?

According to a little five year old girl named Anna, God does not.

The following is from a little treasure I found in Grandma Wood’s bookcase entitled “Mister God, This is Anna.”

“Flynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.” [Anna] hesitated. “He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the pollywogs, but they don’t love me. I love you, Flynn, and you love me, don’t you?”

I tightened my arm about her.

“You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.”

It sounded to me like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping stone.

“No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.”

I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.

“Flynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I? But Mister God is different. You see, Flynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.”

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.

“You see, Flynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s [Anna’s name for Jesus] love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.”

The first salvo was enough for me; it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasn’t going to be spared the rest of her artillery.

“Flynn, why do people have fights and wars and things?”

I explained to the best of my ability.

“Flynn, what is the word for when you see it in a different way?”

After a minute or two of scrambling about, the precise phrase she wanted was dredged out of me, the phrase point of view.

“Flynn, that’s the difference. You see, everyone has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn’t. Mister God has points to view.”

At this moment, my one desire was to get up and go for a long, long walk. What was this child up to? What had she done? In the first place, God could finish things off, I couldn’t. I’ll accept that, but what did it mean? It seemed to me that she had taken the whole idea of God outside the limitation of time and placed him firmly in the realm of eternity.

What about this difference between a point of view and points to view? This stumped me, but a little further questioning cleared up the mystery. Points to view was a clumsy term. She meant viewing points. The second salvo had been fired. Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points. When I put it to her this way and asked her if that was what she meant, she nodded her agreement and then waited to see if I enjoyed the taste. Let me see now. Humanity has an infinite number of points of view. God has an infinite number of viewing points. That means that - God is everywhere. I jumped.

Anna burst into peals of laughter. “You see,” she said, “you see?” I did, too.

“There’s another way that Mister God is different.” We obviously hadn’t finished yet. “Mister God can know things and people from the inside, too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Flynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about God from the inside of him.”

Interesting, isn’t it? I had to mull it over for a bit. While God sees everything from every known and unknown perspective, I see things from at best three or four, and that’s only if I search very, very hard. In the meantime, I miss other points of view equally, if not more important.

This knowledge gives me great pause when something happens involving other people. I may be right from standing over here, but another person standing opposite of me holds a piece of knowledge, a perspective, that forces me to move - if I'm smart enough to take that knowledge.

I’ve been moved. To silence and to humility.