An e-mail I am not going to send to my mother-in-law. I love her dearly, but I am NOT ready to hear her answers to this right now. But I can't just delete it.

"Okay, let me just say what I've been struggling through. If I can at all articulate it. What kind of love is this (God's love) if it's not based on the beauty of who I am at all? What kind of love is this if God arbitrarily picked persons x, y and z and I just happen to be person z? I grew up hearing God loves very dearly every single person He created, because each of us are a beautiful creation by the same artist God who paints sunsets, and He longs for all to be saved. I hate to open this can of worms with you, but now what I hear is God doesn't really love people in that way at all. He just creates each person and then loves whomever He chooses. And His choosing us isn't based on individual beauty of personality, because none of us are beautiful without Him anyway. So from this I get, "I am not a beautiful creation of God, or if I am, it's only because I got arbitrarily picked out of billions of people and after that God started making me beautiful."

"So what I'm left with is an image of a hollow God whose definition of "love" is an arbitrary and impersonal "love" and a deflated sense of self-worth. I have no self-worth. God only loves me if Christ is in me, because He only loves Christ in us, not us.

"This God I'm hearing about seems just like an arbitrary, impersonal God. Yeah, He died for us, but only for the creations He decided He liked.

"So what I'm looking for, what I need to hear, is something that tells me that this is not true. Because how can it be true? How can the Bible say "God is love" and then just qualify it with, "God is arbitrary, impersonal 'love'"?

"I've been through a LOT of devastating election-free will questions in the last 3 years; this is just the most recent manifestation."

Oy. Diary, is there some reason this battle is such an ongoing one for so many women (as my friend Michelle tells me)? Could it possibly be because it is WRONG?!?!?!

Not that I could possibly tell you what is right. But this resonates so devastatingly within so many women. How could God possibly want this?

I am so. Angry. At this impersonal, arbitrary God I've been hearing about. God CANNOT be that way!

Sorry......I'll be glad when Stephen gets here so I can decompress with him. I'll feel worlds better.

-Stephanie

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