The Question
In 2003, Paul Edward asked me a question I have never been able to shake: What does God think about you?
I was deep in a pity party at the time. The kind where you send out the invitations, you’re the only guest, and you’ve decided it’s going well. I wasn’t looking for theology. I was looking for someone to agree with me.
Paul didn’t agree with me. He asked the question and he waited.
What My Head Said
So I tried to answer him, and my head answered first. It had a whole list ready. You are a great father. You are a great member of the AA community. You are a great member of your church fellowships. You are an honorable and trustworthy businessman. You are a loyal, faithful, loving husband. And then it asked the question that should have ended the party: So why are you beating yourself up?
I had the evidence. I had the list. And I was beating myself up anyway.
Calling God a Liar
If I remember right, Paul’s next question was the one that landed: If God says one thing about you and you say another, who are you calling a liar?
I was. That’s the plain truth of it. I had been calling God a liar, quietly, from the couch of my pity party, and I had been calling it humility.
Self-contempt dresses up as honesty. It sounds so reasonable. But if God has already spoken, then agreeing with my own condemnation over his word isn’t humble. It’s a disagreement with him, and one of us is wrong.
What He Says
Then I looked at that list again, really looked, and something turned over in me. God loves the heck out of me. He had made me great. The list wasn’t a case I was making for myself. It was evidence of what he had made.
So what does God think about you? Here is what I’ve found since.
He made you in his own image, and he said so before you had done anything right or wrong (Genesis 1:27). He knit you together and knows you completely (Psalm 139). He calls you precious in his eyes and honored, and says he loves you (Isaiah 43:4). He showed his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned up. While.
The one I keep coming back to is Daniel 9:23. Daniel has just spent an entire prayer confessing, owning his people’s rebellion without one word of self-defense. Then Gabriel shows up and tells him an answer went out the moment he began to pray, and that he is greatly loved.
The Hebrew word is chamudot. It comes from the root that means to desire, to delight in. It’s the same root behind “covet.” Usually that word describes what a person wants. Here, heaven is the one doing the wanting. God looked at an old man in sackcloth and ashes and said, in effect, you are the one I desire.
Why I Don’t Stay There
Here’s what I still can’t explain. I can sit with the list. I can sit with what God’s word says I am. And still some spirit comes in and convinces me otherwise.
I’ve come to recognize that it has something to do with ego, which always wants to be right, even when the case it’s arguing is against me. And underneath the ego, it’s fear.
So why don’t I trust a love that is this obvious? I’m not sure obvious is the same as safe. I can see that a bridge will hold and still be afraid to walk out on it.
Daniel gives me some comfort here. In chapter 10, a few verses past the answer I love so much, he is trembling and has no strength left. And the messenger says it again: greatly loved (10:11). Then, a few verses later, he says it a third time, with fear not attached, and Daniel is strengthened (10:19). The same word from chapter 9 had to be spoken again.
Maybe the truth isn’t a place I arrive at and stay. Maybe it’s something I have to be told again, by God, by Paul in 2003, by the people in the rooms.
I’m not going to tie this up neatly, because I’m still learning to trust it. But I know which voice has never lied.