Do you find it difficult to believe God/Jesus loves all of us?

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I am not talking about mass murder type people. There are some people are just blessed with very great personality. Others I would prefer to run from. Some people cannot hold a profound conversation. Some people cannot stop talking. Some people seem to be filled with flaws and iniquities. Some people are immature and petty. It is often difficult for me to imagine how God loves us, NO MATTER WHAT. I am nowhere near.
 
You just need to look at it in the grand scheme of things. Being loved by God does not mean living in a perfect world. It means being offered the path INTO a perfect world, which God offers for everyone, regardless of how unworthy and evil we make ourselves. We can commit horrific atrocities, and yet there will be no second flood; God will continue to offer us the path to salvation, out of nothing but his sheer love for us. Remember that God sent his beloved son into this world to suffer, solely so that we could rest in paradise in the next.
 
Intellectually, I believe God does love us all, although my feelings might say otherwise at times. If I didn’t believe, almost everything else in Catholicism would be difficult for me to accept; faith in His love is crucial. Hypothetically, even if it were only one human being in existence who actually needed salvation, I believe Jesus would still offer himself up for that single person.

At times, I tend to think of myself as just one of His many children. However, I try to remind myself He cares for me as an individual, that He is aware of my every thought and action, and that He watches me with great love, sustaining my very existence. If He didn’t love or care for us, I assume He could just take us out of existence in less than a second. Or rather, He wouldn’t have created us in the first place, since He knew what we were capable of.

'Tis common for people to imagine God holding the same standards they do. It’s just like how people who tend to be hard on themselves imagine that others, including God, can’t possibly love them. There are also people who find it hard to forgive the weaknesses and faults of others and so find it hard to believe that God can. Some people have had uncaring parents or guardians, and they might project these experiences and feelings onto God.

When we think it would be hard for God to love or forgive, it’s usually because we find it hard to love or forgive, but God’s not us.
Let the wicked abandon his way and the evil one his thoughts. Let him turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness; for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares Yahweh. For the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.
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Just curious, but why don’t you include mass murdering-type people in your question?
 
I don’t actually find this concept difficult to grasp, as I see it at work all around me as well as in my own life. We have different qualities because we’re different people. We have different challenges because we don’t all have the same lessons to learn. But we do all have challenges. There is no such thing as a problem-free life.

Some of the most profound blessings the Lord has given me have come in the form of something I have had to endure. In one ongoing situation, it took nearly two years for me to understand that the exercise has a purpose other than driving me up the wall. 😛 It would have been far easier to wash my hands of the ordeal, but had I rejected this cross earlier I wouldn’t be blessed by it today.

As Virga alludes to, it’s important not to hold God up to human standards. Whether or not I find a person lovable, God does indeed love that person.

My life seems wonderful to the casual observer and I do indeed have much to be thankful for, but I have had (and in some cases still have) difficult things to deal with over the course of my earthly existence. I have not been given these problems as punishment but as signs God trusts me to bear them with dignity (note that I often fail in this regard :o) and learn from them what He intends to teach me.
 
No, I do not find it difficult to believe God/Jesus loves all of us.
Isaiah 55:9

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
 
No. I believe we are his children. All parents here will tell you that their children frustrate, annoy and sometimes even anger them. But they also make you laugh, love like you have never experienced before, cry with pride, protective to the point where you are willing to lay your life down for them.

We love our children even when they are at their most unlovable and that is where discipline comes in. We may not like what they say or do sometimes which requires a serious conversation but a parents love will never be withdrawn from their child. Even a murderer and a rapist has a parent who loves them and prays for their conversion to a better life and wiser life choices.

God had a hand in creating you, upon conception he gave you your soul, of course every one of us is precious to him.

I knew you before you were formed in the womb.
 
Cratus,

My friend. As the “black sheep” in my family, the one is “silly” and “immature,” I think I have an odd perspective. For example, my sister decides to become a Christian, she and her husband join a church and take their kids weekly and become involved in ministries…to the family she is great and wonderful and “Oh, how nice!”

I join a church and, “Oh, Catie’s being weird again. She’s going to be a religious nut.”

So, here’s a little secret I will share with my brothers and sisters on CAF: I find it much easier sometimes to believe that God/Jesus loves and forgives folks like Charles Manson and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev than crazy, twice-divorced, silly, immature, never-learns, broken little me.

You said:

“There are some people are just blessed with very great personality. Others I would prefer to run from. Some people cannot hold a profound conversation. Some people cannot stop talking. Some people seem to be filled with flaws and iniquities.”

Some folks think I have a great, bubbly, tenacious personality. (As soon as Easter Vigil was over, our parish put me right to work in a couple of ministries!) My family thinks I’m a loud-mouth. I have a doctorate, but I love juvenile humor and jokes about bodily functions. I am “filled with flaws and iniquities.”

Are you struggling with seeing how He could love you?
 
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