Does God love me?

[Seraphim73]

Interesting. It still seems perfectly impersonal to me. I could rise to be in charge of a factory or a garden, but that doesn’t mean the factory or the garden love me. An artist could make me curator of the museum of his artworks and inventions, as well, but, again, doesn’t prove I am “loved.”

Keep at this line of thought, though. I’m curious to hear how you feel it / see it differently.

I can understand your feelings. I’m sorry that you are feeling the way you do but I also rejoice. If you didn’t love and desire God you wouldn’t care how you feel. I believe you are on the right path. I would also point out to you that Mother Theresa felt as you do for many, many years. Joy is a gift. The presence of feelings do not indicate holiness anymore than the absence of them indicate you are doomed. The feelings may never come and that’s okay. Whatever you do don’t take your hand off the plow and never come down from the cross.

 

[JosieN]

Interesting. Seriously. Yet, until it results in finding, it’s just pain.

Perhaps more importantly, I think there is an equivocation here between the desire to feel loved and the desire to give love. I am not short of people to whom I give love. I feel short of a God by whom I feel loved.

If you long for His love, you must know what His love feels like. You can’t long for something you know nothing about. I think you may know His love but long for more, as all Christians do. This longing keeps us praying and make daily sacrifices. Christians hope that one day (but not in this life )we will have eternal life with God and the longing will end.

 

[Neoplatonist]

If you long for His love, you must know what His love feels like. You can’t long for something you know nothing about. I think you may know His love but long for more, as all Christians do. This longing keeps us praying and make daily sacrifices. Christians hope that one day (but not in this life )we will have eternal life with God and the longing will end.

An interesting idea, but not necessarily true. We are perfectly capable of extrapolating from things we have experienced—like the love of other people. We are also perfectly capable of finding the available alternatives unsatisfactory without being assured that there is an option that will meet our need and certainly without knowing what form that solution would take.

 

[Winterwolf00]

If you are not even willing to have an open mind about it there is nothing God or any human can do to change your mind.

I do have an open mind, I am prepared to believe anything if you can provide evidence for it.
I do NOT just believe whatever I hear.

That doesn’t make me close-minded, that makes me not gullible.

 

[Winterwolf00]

That’s an extremely good question.** I think creation perfectly expresses God’s care for us** simply because it exists, because we have charge over it, in how we are taken cared for through it, in how we can see the beauty.

Riiiiight.

The effects of Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a disease which causes damaged soft tissue to regrow as bone. Sufferers are slowly imprisoned by their own skeletons.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva

 

[Seraphim73]

Riiiiight.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva

Disease is a direct result of our separation from God.

 

[Seraphim73]

Riiiiight.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva

Disease is a direct result of sin. If we had not broken communion with God we would not suffer and die. But more importantly, seen through the light of the Gospel, suffering is unitive and redemptive. God Himself chose to suffer horribly in order to redeem us. That is the great surprise of the Gospel. That’s what no one expected. That God would save us by being humiliated and killed. That God would reveal His power through dying.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to the Jews and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.​

 

[oldcatholicguy]

How can I become certain that God loves me? I know he had infinite love but I suffer from fear that I am excluded and I can’t shake it.

You exist, therefore God loves you. It’s as simple as that.

 

[JosieN]

An interesting idea, but not necessarily true. We are perfectly capable of extrapolating from things we have experienced—like the love of other people. We are also perfectly capable of finding the available alternatives unsatisfactory without being assured that there is an option that will meet our need and certainly without knowing what form that solution would take.

Yes but if you never tasted chocolate, how could you crave it? If you never drank coffee how could you become addicted to the caffeine in it? Both of which I love and would not love if I had never tasted it, I think the answer to your question is to keep searching, I find that God has a reason for not answering our prayers right away. But you will not know this until you are able to look back in time and then you may understand why, Also I once heard a sermon from a very good priest, I think he has passed away now. He said that in order to hear God in our lives we must be quiet and still and allow His presence into our hearts and minds, (not the exact words) Sometimes I think we demand too much and talk too much to hear what He has to say. When He communicates with us it probably will not be in human words, sometimes it is just a feeling and you may not know it right away. But when you look back you will realize it was not you but God guiding you in that direction,

 

[Neoplatonist]

Yes but if you never tasted chocolate, how could you crave it? If you never drank coffee how could you become addicted to the caffeine in it? Both of which I love and would not love if I had never tasted it, I think the answer to your question is to keep searching, I find that God has a reason for not answering our prayers right away. But you will not know this until you are able to look back in time and then you may understand why, Also I once heard a sermon from a very good priest, I think he has passed away now. He said that in order to hear God in our lives we must be quiet and still and allow His presence into our hearts and minds, (not the exact words) Sometimes I think we demand too much and talk too much to hear what He has to say. When He communicates with us it probably will not be in human words, sometimes it is just a feeling and you may not know it right away. But when you look back you will realize it was not you but God guiding you in that direction,

vs. chocolate and caffeine: There are lots of other examples I could give, but let me just offer two:
a.) babies crave mothers milk without ever having tasted it,

b.) someone born with a horrible (new) medical condition can crave a cure with every ounce of their being, but never have found one.

vs. silence:
a.) a regular part of my practice.

b.) At the same time, that can hardly be a requirement or we wouldn’t have all those great examples of saints down through time who were jolted out of their distraction by God.

c.) If a mother or a teacher or counselor is trying to get through to a suffering child, and it’s not working, they escalate the intervention.

Let’s imagine that person suffering from a medical condition, and we have a variety of amazing cures, but the doctor doesn’t give them because the suffering drives that person to write unbelievably talented poetry, or produce heart-wrenching art, or makes them compassionate. Do we honestly consider that doctor’s decision to be the right one??

 

[Seraphim73]

vs. chocolate and caffeine: There are lots of other examples I could give, but let me just offer two:
a.) babies crave mothers milk without ever having tasted it,

b.) someone born with a horrible (new) medical condition can crave a cure with every ounce of their being, but never have found one.

vs. silence:
a.) a regular part of my practice.

b.) At the same time, that can hardly be a requirement or we wouldn’t have all those great examples of saints down through time who were jolted out of their distraction by God.

c.) If a mother or a teacher or counselor is trying to get through to a suffering child, and it’s not working, they escalate the intervention.

Let’s imagine that person suffering from a medical condition, and we have a variety of amazing cures, but the doctor doesn’t give them because the suffering drives that person to write unbelievably talented poetry, or produce heart-wrenching art, or makes them compassionate. Do we honestly consider that doctor’s decision to be the right one??

I think a more apt analogy would be a fever. The doctor could give medicine to relieve it but then the underlying infection would spread. If the doctor allows this painful, uncomfortable fever to run it’s course then it purges the infection. We are all sick and we all require different treatments. If God has indeed withdrawn the feeling of His presence from you then that is the medicine you need to be healed. We are still children of this world and being born into the next is often painful. But God knows exactly what you need, far better than we do.

 

[Neoplatonist]

I think a more apt analogy would be a fever. The doctor could give medicine to relieve it but then the underlying infection would spread. If the doctor allows this painful, uncomfortable fever to run it’s course then it purges the infection. We are all sick and we all require different treatments. If God has indeed withdrawn the feeling of His presence from you then that is the medicine you need to be healed. We are still children of this world and being born into the next is often painful. But God knows exactly what you need, far better than we do.

So God gives us a disease such that the way to cure it is for us to spend our lives feeling abandoned and unloved? Under what possible analogy is that not messed up?

How could I possibly be a worse human being as a result of feeling loved by God? That, too, seems to create a strange variety of contradictions within the tradition.

 

[Seraphim73]

So God gives us a disease such that the way to cure it is for us to spend our lives feeling abandoned and unloved? Under what possible analogy is that not messed up?

How could I possibly be a worse human being as a result of feeling loved by God? That, too, seems to create a strange variety of contradictions within the tradition.

God doesn’t give you spiritual illnesses, which is what the analogy is about. And feeling God’s presence can be a point of pride and complacency for some. I’m not saying that’s the case with you, I’m simply giving examples. I would have never turned to God had I not been beaten into submission by an alcohol addiction. Some people only turn to God after contracting a terminal illness. We can’t see all avenues. God’s ways are inscrutable. We often don’t understand why He does what He does.

 

[JosieN]

In the Gospel According to John Chapter 15, Verse 10 Jesus says

“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”

In the Gospel According to Luke Chapter 12, Verse 33-34 Jesus says

" Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be."

Yes God loves you but He also knows when His commandments are kept and where our hearts are.

 

[Neoplatonist]

And yet, the fact that it might give them a sense of pride apparently doesn’t prevent God from allowing them to feel his love, if that’s what’s really happening in those cases.

Saying God is inscrutable suggests that we can’t make any solid claims one way or another about who/whether God loves. It’s always strange to me when people use that line of defense as part of some claim about what God is or isn’t like.

Right, I must just be still hoarding earthly treasures too much, as evidenced by slowly going broke trying to raise a family on a Catholic schoolteacher’s salary. Be gone, O, my avarice!

 

[Neoplatonist]

God doesn’t give you spiritual illnesses, which is what the analogy is about. And feeling God’s presence can be a point of pride and complacency for some. I’m not saying that’s the case with you, I’m simply giving examples. I would have never turned to God had I not been beaten into submission by an alcohol addiction. Some people only turn to God after contracting a terminal illness. We can’t see all avenues. God’s ways are inscrutable. We often don’t understand why He does what He does.

So, wait, the spiritual dryness is NOT by God’s will? So he is not testing us or strengthening us or whatever by means of that? Interesting.

Sure, beaten into submission, got it. Early and often. Turning toward God, got that part too. Spent my life turning toward God. Not sure I see how that solves the question.

Already addressed the mystery part.

Still not seeing how not feeling loved should make me feel more loved. ?]

 

[JosieN]

And yet, the fact that it might give them a sense of pride apparently doesn’t prevent God from allowing them to feel his love, if that’s what’s really happening in those cases.

Saying God is inscrutable suggests that we can’t make any solid claims one way or another about who/whether God loves. It’s always strange to me when people use that line of defense as part of some claim about what God is or isn’t like.

Right, I must just be still hoarding earthly treasures too much, as evidenced by slowly going broke trying to raise a family on a Catholic schoolteacher’s salary. Be gone, O, my avarice!

I am beginning to understand the problem . May God have mercy on you. I will pray for you.

 

[Neoplatonist]

Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that I ‘deserve’ anything. I’m just trying to clarify why I don’t understand with regard to what part I’m doing wrong.

If I’m doing it partly right, wouldn’t I feel at least partly loved?

 

[JosieN]

Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that I ‘deserve’ anything. I’m just trying to clarify why I don’t understand with regard to what part I’m doing wrong.

If I’m doing it partly right, wouldn’t I feel at least partly loved?

I think at some point on this journey of life we all feel the way you do. May God Bless you and answer your prayers. My daughter and I prayed a rosary for you tonight.

 

[Seraphim73]

So, wait, the spiritual dryness is NOT by God’s will? So he is not testing us or strengthening us or whatever by means of that? Interesting.

Sure, beaten into submission, got it. Early and often. Turning toward God, got that part too. Spent my life turning toward God. Not sure I see how that solves the question.

Already addressed the mystery part.

Still not seeing how not feeling loved should make me feel more loved. ?]

None of our faults are by God’s will. But He does use them to save us.