Why God's worth it and why I'd be rubbish at making signs for the M11

You know me, yeah? Well remember there was that monumental phase of blog posts rambling on about `authentic faith`... It occured to me that I have a nice image of God in my head and in my heart, but I've always struggled to convey this to other people in the werld. I think that's because I communicate God by challenging what common conceptions are: the likes of which I disagree. Almost contextualising God by the pitfalls of other followers of today and through history. It would be like writing those signs for the M11 saying:

``This motorway does not stop at: Arminghall, Birmingham, Brighton, Chester, Colchester.......... Yeovil or Zimbabwe``

I think if I ever want to relate my perception of God to someone, I probably need to start thinking along the lines of what He is, rather than contextualising though eliminating the well meaning but superphelous interpositions (like hymns, flag waving, raising hands etc...) between God and man that seem so epicly disasterous to me, but probably not to anyone else.

So here are:

Captain Sir Benjamin F. McFosterson III Esq.'s Axiomatic Truths of Authentic God ™

• God is love. I once heared `the opposite of love isn't hate, but indiffernce`. If there's one thing that God does to show His love, it's everything. The Bible is an homage to God interfering in our mess ups, digressions, indiscressions and general human-ups in life. In fact the only time off the top of my immense brain when God slopes His shoulders with people is when Jesus is on the cross and says `you int 'arf forsaken me, innit` and in hindsight, that certainly comes across as quite well in our favour in the grand scheme of things. God is love, and everything that love is, everything love stands for, everything love aspires to be. He's not permiated with the charactor of love, He's actually made of the stuff. In fact, I think I might even be worshipping a divine bowl of love soup. If you can get your head around that - and I mean REALLY grasp it - then the next step is to understand that God's love is not one side of a dichotomy. God's love is not a love by the contrast of hate/indifference/people trafficking, it's more than a concept, more than an attribute, unquanitifiable, uncomprimisable, unextinguishable. God IS ... love!

• The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.
... which I suppose carries on from the Benjamatic's First Axiomatic Truth of God. My favourite parts of the Bible are where God tells people that he wants kindnesses more than burnt donkies. I don't think there's ought more Godly we can do in this world than love others as God loves us. Nor is any more required. Unfortunately I think as humans our love is based on a dichotomy - the decision to do good instead of evil. I'm not sure God has the capacity to do evil but humans do, so becoming like God is a self-brainwashing process of consciously doing what's right and learning to make that intuative and sincere. That's not to say God's judgement doesn't take into consideration each person's compulsions and volitions to love, but to paraphrase my first blog on Authentic Faith:

Authentic faith isn't the pursuit of love, it is love. Authentic Faith doesn't aspire to love, because it's only attainable by loving, and being love in the first place. Love may well be the lynch-pin to Christianity, but for Authentic Faith to occur, love must be the encompasing, defining, saturating feature of the follower. More than an attitude - as much a feature of the person as their own blood and ears. A life surrendered without comprimise.

• All we need to worship and commune with God is that which He gave us when we were born. We have everything we need right here right now.
• A heart, 
• a passion, 
• a gratitude, 
• a humility, 
• a servitude, 
• a vague and potted knowlege of who God is and what He's done, 
• a brotherhood of like minded children of God, 

And that's it. That's all it is. That's all He wants. That's all He cares about. I think God's reaction to Church bands is like my reaction to the BBC iDents... yeah - you've put a lot of work into it, but it doesn't make me love you any more than I just did a moment ago, Mr BBC, it's just padding out time to be doing more useful things. But that, is of course, just my opinion.


So there you have it: Ben's Wee List regressing a very long Bible into three neat post-modern-esque bullet points. Just what God would have wanted... Authentic Faith as defined by what it is instead of what it isn't. I still feel like it's more powerful to describe based on the contranyms between church and Authentic Faith but that's because I'm coming from a reactionary/contrary point of view, I suppose. But at the end of the day, so long as I'm better at following God than getting to J27 westbound on the M25, everyone's a winner.