(Personal note from Kent. . . . my last post from the Givens’ brought an objection that they did not always stay in harmony with what the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints teaches. Based upon that criteria, if I were to end publishing from them, it would be severely limiting (also ending posts with the preamble asterisks *). We would be wise to always read with wisdom, good judgment and certainly the Spirit to teach us.)
From the previous post * His Heart is Set Upon Us: Our first point is that if Gods such as Moloch, or the God of some Christians, exist, they do not deserve our reverence or our love. We, just as Huck or Ivan or countless others, would be justified in saying, “No, I will not bow to such a God.” At the risk of our own eternal annihilation, we would resist. . . continuing
Our second point, if we find ourselves inclined to believe a powerful deity does preside over the universe, the assumption that he would be a more perfect embodiment of the morally good that we recognize and seek to emulate is not wishful thinking. Belief in a God who is more rather than less generous and forgiving, who will extend the maximum mercy He can, and impose the minimum justice He must, is not a fanciful hope. It is a logical and reasonable inference. Certainly this God would be as far above us morally, as He would be intellectually. But it would make sense to look for a God who inhabits the true north toward which our innate moral compass points us.
For centuries, Christians were told they have no right to expect that their sense of what is just, or true, or right, is a reliable guide to what God considers just, or true, or right. Perhaps the argument goes, they are simply incapable of understanding Justice, Truth, and Right writ large, as seen from God’s perspective. But we are talking here of more than a simple difference in perspective. Of course our view is partial, and imperfect. The question is, have we good reason to believe we are even in the same ballpark as God when it comes to the values we hold dear? The idea that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways, has been used as a cudgel to beat into abject submission any who question a Deity’s right to save whom He will and damn whom He will, to bless of curse as He chooses, to have His own heavenly notions about what is good and right.
In actual fact, it makes little sense to recognize in our conscience a reliable guide to what is virtuous, lovely, and praiseworthy in the world where God has placed us, while suggesting He inhabits a different moral universe. It makes little sense to suggest that He endowed us with an intuitive grammar of right and wrong, while He himself speaks a different moral language. As the character in Elie Wiesel’s play, The Trial of God, protests, if our truth “is not His as well, then He’s worse than I thought. Then it would mean he gave us the taste, the passion of truth without telling us that this truth is not true!” Terryl and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps (R.R. Donnelley, Crawfordsville, IN, 2012), 18-19
