The Fourth Message

I had started thinking about this blog sometime after receiving the third message. I hesitated because I knew it would worry my wife. Despite my promise of anonymity my wife was still concerned that someone would read the blog and be able to figure out who I was. And although I am not ashamed of anything I have written here, it is a highly intimate baring of my soul, complete with personal mental health details, that I was only prepared to share with my wife.

But then I received a fourth message:

Share your beliefs

And so here we are. The reason this blog exists.

Now you can parse those words and convince yourself They meant just share it with your closest inner circle of family and friends. But I believe that’s not what The Greatest Love meant. They meant make it public somehow and in so doing I needed to make a decision. My wife did not want me to make the blog public. My god did. And so who do I listen to? Who is more important to me? Who do I love more?

Those two latter questions have an easy answer for me: my wife. She is the love of my life and the woman I love more than my god. And I’m not worried about the consequences of saying that. You see there was a time in the past when Yahweh commanded His people to love Him before all others. This was the god of the Christian Bible. I believe that is the same god as today but now They are playing by different rules because humanity has progressed. Love has been enshrined into the secular laws, charters, and constitutions of many nations. And so I believe the relationship between humanity and The Greatest Love has advanced along with us. Humanity has grown and in the process blind obedience and unquestioning worship have given way to love – love for all humanity.

I believe The Greatest Love is no longer concerned about how people rank the relative strength of their love for people, and their god(s). The Greatest Love just cares that people love, period. We are free to love our families before The Greatest Love, our friends, our nations, or any of the other great passions of our life. Do not feel the need to love The Greatest Love before all others. In fact They can accept if you do not love them at all, or even believe in them at all. So long as you love someone outside yourself.

That is not to say The Greatest Love does not want to have a personal relationship with each of us. They do. But They also recognize that love must come freely and can never be compelled. They can accept your lack of love or belief in Them and Their infinite love for you will never fade. Their judgement of you will remain unimpacted by any lack of belief.

Think of that for a moment. A god whose love for us is greater than Their Knowledge or Power. Despite that they ask nearly nothing from us in return. Not our love. Not our worship. Not even our belief. They created us, gave us life, and ask only that we love as broadly and as deeply as we possibly can. It is this lesson in infinite Grace and Mercy that humbles me, and it is why I choose to worship my god through personal prayer and reflection. Not because I have to, but because I want to. And not out of fear, but out of love.

Finally if I love my wife more than The Greatest Love why did I make this blog public? Because love does not dictate obedience. The love for my wife and my god, although important considerations, were only parts of the calculation. Upon receiving the fourth message I also listened to my own heart. For my own mental health and well-being I felt I needed to write this blog. I then asked my wife again, given these feelings, whether she would be fine with me doing so. I wanted to make the blog public because, first and foremost, I thought it would be cathartic for me. The belief that my god had asked me to do it was, in fact, secondary. And together my partner and I agreed that I should write this blog.

When deciding on how to act based on love we must consider the well-being of everyone involved, including ourselves.