On God's point of view

We often reduce the scope of God's concern to the scope of our own concerns. We are confused when we get ill and are not healed. We are outraged when a natural disaster - a so-called Act of God - is not averted. We commit acts of war or terror believing that God has commissioned us.

What if God's point of view is different from ours? Indeed, what if God's point of view is so different that we cannot remotely have any conception of that point of view? When someone dies, we see this as a great tragedy: what if God does not see it like that?

Whilst I believe that God cares passionately for each one of us (and by 'us' I mean all beings upon this Earth, not only us (relatively unimportant) humans), I also love the idea that God's ways are different and higher that ours (Isaiah 55.8-9). Perhaps caring passionately for us is not the same thing as caring for the continuing of the existence in which we currently are manifested. Perhaps, for God, illness and death are not disasters.

Of course, it is important to realise how wrong-headed and potentially damaged and damaging this language is. God is not a person: God does not 'care', is not 'concerned', does not have 'a point of view', does not 'see' - or at least, not in any way we would recognise.