Choose Your God

I have been ruminating over a theory about God for some time now. It began a couple of years ago when I was reading a book about St. Therese. She talked about a sister who offered herself as a victim for God’s justice, and the suffering that sister went through. She talked about how she knew she couldn’t bear that, so she asked to be a victim of His love and for Him to pour His extra love that no one wanted out on her. He poured Himself out on her in love, though she didn’t necessarily have an easy life, she did have a more peaceful relationship with God.

It occurred to me that what if our relationships with God work this way? What if He is whoever we need Him to be? The concept of God is something we can’t fully understand, He is everything and nothing, human, superhuman, and inhuman, man and woman, love and justice, mercy and grace. What if He is somehow all of the things we say He is? What if in our relationship with Him He will be whoever we need Him to be.

I can already hear Catholics saying I’m being relativistic, but I’m not talking about right or wrong, or that God changes who He is because we know better than Him or there is no truth, or whatever, but what if God is all of the things, but He reveals certain parts of Himself to certain people.

Someone said to me once, “Is Heaven even worth going to if you don’t have to fight to get there? I don’t want to go to a Heaven like that.”

At the time, I was horrified and I figured that that was exactly the problem with people, and that if they got to Heaven and it was easy and accepting they wouldn’t like it. To be fair, I’m not 100% sure I disagree with that feeling even now. However, it occurred to me that maybe some people do need the rush of the fight to get into Heaven.

Some people flourish when a boss yells at them, I crumble into a million pieces. Some people do better when they have all the time to plan something, I do better with a deadline. There are couples I know that if I lived their life I would be outright miserable, but if they lived mine they would hate it just as much.

What if God meets that in us? What if God works in symbolism and nature and love for me because He knows that I need His gentleness and love? What if He works in subtlety and art for the next person because He knows they hate religion? What if He works in demands and rules for those who need to feel like they fought the good fight? What if He can be female for a woman who was raped and can’t handle seeing men? What if He can be present in whatever is going on in your life however you need Him, and not just in the ways other people say?

I believe that God is both one and everything, and because of that He is also anything, and that means that He CAN be all things to all people, and maybe it’s ok to choose who you need Him to be for a while. Maybe it’s ok to say, “Hey, can you just hold me tonight, I’m sad and I don’t know the right thing to do.” Maybe He knows how to tell you you are trying and you are His even when you feel completely lost. Maybe He knows you, and He wants to be close to you, and He knows where you fit with where He does.