i was lying in bed this morning having my usual morning chat with 'whutzutsname' and getting all snuggly as usual basking in the delight of the warm fuzzies known by some as 'grace'. i love my relationship with the 'boss'. the boss is good to me, even when things are not seeming to go well, they are still going and they drag me along, albeit kicking and screaming, but i never seem to mind the bruises, because the boss always tends to them like a good mother .... um, er like a father ..... no that's not it, and certainly not like a sister or a brother.

after all, my brother destroyed my innocence, my sister betrayed me, as did my mother who denied my pain and relegated me to the end of the nurture queue, and my father .....well, if he was a model of supreme beneficence, i'll eat my hat!

as i lay there talking to the boss, i felt the desire to verbalize my feelings, to say 'i love you boss'. i wanted to compare the love i had to something that existed, but i couldn't find anything. because nothing compares to the relationship i have with the boss. well, actually not nothing, because what i feel is something, but nothing like i've ever experienced in a human person.

why do they use frail broken, human people with all their flaws and foibles to characterize god? as a father has pity on his sons; would a mother forget her baby, or a woman the child within her womb' [sorry not trying to pick on the bible, but these are the only references that come to mind right now]. coming from a tradition of western religion, it seems to be the only one that refers to god as having these human characteristics.

why would a religion use such impoverished examples to connote characteristics of such an indefinable entity? certainly not because it's the best option out there. what were they thinking?

boy this realization smacked me upside the head like a two-by-four, and knocked me right out of my romanticized warm fuzzy grace filled reverie, catapulting me into a chair in front of this computer screen.

god as father, mother, sister, brother?

surely, you jest!

ron

[ps, i do realize these are weak frail human beings, and i can forgive that, but please cut it with the godlike representation crap.....sound to me like you're talking more about the evil one, not the beneficent one]

ron,

more than likely "the boss" has been referenced in those terms so that we as humans can somewhat understand. also knowing that we cannot fully understand until we are with the boss.

however, as far as letting the boss know how much love you have for the boss, the only thing i can say to that is the boss knows. the boss knows what's truly on your heart. should it matter how it's expressed by you or others? my personal opinion is that for those who believe in whatever creator they believe in that they have their own personal relationship with their boss.

Ron, I've read this several times and all I can say is that I can sure understand where you are coming from. My father was very distant and God, or the boss, as you say is definitely not distant. My mother was physically and emotional abusive, so yes, I hear what you are saying and understand it all too well.

When I was young, the people I looked up to painted a picture of a god for me that was a lie. The god i learned about does not and never did exist. I now have a close relationship with a being I choose to call God. But I don't think of this God as a father or mother for reasons already stated.

I suppose that I could reject the term God for all the same reasons that I reject the use of the terms father or mother, but for now, the term God works for me.

So anyway, just some of my thoughts.

Darrel

Ron - painful as it may be - and since you brought up the word Bible that's what I'll use - there are references in the Book about God being one way or another so we finite humans can have some modicum of understanding of the infinite. Word pictures, if you will. We need to be careful to remember that while there are de>