“The beginning of love is to let those we love to be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image.” –  Thomas Merton.

Did God create me, too, I wonder?

And did he or she give me the gift of becoming a writer, and if so, does he also bless me for doing what I love and saying what I feel?

And if that is true, can I achieve my goal to love those I dislike and disagree with as well as those I already love? Will I ever be able to empathize with people I dislike as well as people I care for?

It’s a heavy-duty spiritual question, but it got me spinning as I lay in bed early this morning.

Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning and its still dark, I like to pick up my cell phone and check the messages that came in overnight.

I get a lot of messages, if I don’t keep up, I fall quickly behind.

I delete the death threats and warnings and obscene messages and also appreciate the kind words of thanks and the thoughtful observations and replies.

One of the first messages I came across was one warning me that my soul might be in peril for writing something critical about President Trump. I always have to pinch myself and remind myself that I am living in American in 2020, and it isn’t a dream or nightmare.

It was a cold way to begin the day, but it woke me up, this message from a woman named  Linda Carol Von Ness:

“I see Mr. Katz that you begin your sentences with ‘if you follow the news’ so I will find it in my heart to forgive you for the lies you have decided to make of late because obviously, the news is where you get your information. .. you will be accountable for misleading your readers.. but certainly not to me.. may God have mercy on your soul.”

I wrote right back to Linda since God had suddenly been injected into the conversation, and I was in enough trouble without pissing him off. Carol’s message seemed a little grim and heavy-handed, even for America in the dark summer of 2020.

Usually, convicted serial killers hear that prayer before they are put to death. I had been elevated to the highest levels of evil.

I wasn’t sure if Carol was taking pity on me or condemning me to Hell. Maybe both.

I told her I was puzzled, but her message was very much in line with the mood of our country these days. Our often nasty tweeting President, combined with a fearful pandemic, and wrenching racial turmoil, has left people on edge.

I get all kinds of messages, good and bad, kind and nasty, smart and dumb.

Carol expects God to smite me because she doesn’t like my politics.

I would expect him – or her – to smite her for exploiting the holy name to punish people she disagrees with.

We are both off-kilter in our understanding the very idea of God.

Christian Scholar and Author Kristi Walker write that “because of God’s love for the world, we know love is also undeserving and often unreciprocated.”

I’ll say. Just look at the news, like Carol says.

I try very hard not to disrespect other humans. At the core we are all alike, we all live, and we will all die, but sometimes – quite often – I fail.

Only the strongest and most spiritually advanced among us can absorb and internalize this idea and remember to practice it when provoked or troubled.

I’m getting much better at it, not because I’m noble, but because I’m selfish. Hating people is not healthy. It’s a bigger soul killer than my poor columns.

“Didn’t God create me as well as you?” I asked Carol, knowing she would never reply.

“Didn’t he choose to grant my wish to be a writer, and didn’t he give me the tools to write? ”

If he did that, I wonder, if he created both of us, then why would I fear him for speaking my truth, and why should you fear him for speaking yours?”

Why I wondered, couldn’t we be respecting the sacred thoughts and feelings of each other, even when we disagree? What keeps us from accepting one another as we are?

Was she the only one who could speak for and to God, I asked, and not me? Could he and I also chat about this?

I have a hard time thinking of a God who endorses candidates for President and who wrecks the souls of people who choose someone else. That’s not the God I read about and want to love.

Was I suddenly to be cast out of grace because I criticized President Trump in a book review? Of all the stupid, cruel, and mindless things I’ve done in my life, was it this column that finally did me in? Is this how small and petty our idea of God has become?

No wonder most kids want nothing to do with religion.

Ought God to be something bigger than the petty and grumpy old white man in Carol’s message? Maybe he did endorse Donald Trump?

If God is getting involved in our nasty politics, Hell is going to be over-subscribed, I hope they have some extra bunks down there. Or are we to sleep on coals?

How would Carol’s message work if God was the creator of us both, as the Good Christians, and even the Jews,  believe he is? My Christian mentor, I wrote, was the Trappist Thomas Merton, and he wrote this about God and Love:

“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

Carol, perhaps you want to take another whack at the Bible before you claim to know the mind of God and whisper in his ear about me?

I’ve been more closely drawn to Christianity in my life than any other faith, and while I haven’t landed yet, I am most at home with the teachings and practices of the people I call the “good Christians.” It’s an odd term to use, but it works for me.

Good Christians are slow to judge others, they believe God is about Love, not hate, and they are called to care for the needy and the vulnerable. This is an inspiring kind of faith to live by. I’ve met some in recent years; they tend to be my friends.

Since I am not Christian, I am less tolerant than they are. I also notice some people practice a different kind of Christianity,

I call them Hate Christians, they blame the poor for being poor, they build lavish temples and call them holy, they value money above all things, they seek power over other people, and they have little Love or tolerance for people who disagree with them.

I concede this does seem somewhat hypocritical to me. That came to mind when I read Carol’s message.

Hanna Arendt wrote that “only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil, but only the hypocrite is rotten to the core.” Hypocrites swarm around God like hummingbirds to a feeder.

Carol’s message was not especially important in the context of me, but it is an apt symbol of the dilemma we find ourselves in America.

I get a lot of messages like it, and I think it’s essential to pull one out now and then so we can consider us and perhaps be encouraged to think about how we want to feel and talk about one another.

I do criticize President Trump in my writing, not because I’ve joined a secret conspiracy, but because I disagree with the tone he is setting for our country and his winking at racism and white nationalism.

People write to me all the time and tell me I have no right to say such things, odd comments from American citizens.

I didn’t need to whisper in the ear of the Deep State to feel that way. And I don’t hate Donald Trump. I think truly Good Christians would see him for the broken man he is, and learn to love him for it and despite it.

I hope to get there one day, that is what sets me apart from the truly spiritual, and the pretenders and wannabees.

We live in a culture where even poor God is drawn into the battles of the left and the right and evoked to support political candidates. I imagine him looking down at us, and at the beautiful earth he is said to have created, and weeping great storms.

Carol wasn’t content to disagree with me; she needed to suggest that my very soul was in jeopardy because I wrote something she disagreed with.

I wrote to ask her if she thought that God had endorsed Donald Trump, or if her support of the President guaranteed entry into heaven. Was it evil to think differently than she did, to never be forgiven for having a different point of view?

Did I have the right to criticize him? Does she have to right to love him?

Because of what I write, do I need mercy for my soul? Is that where our democracy is supposed to go?

Where I wondered, did she get this idea of God from, she sounded like she and the Lord had a private line, and that they were in league to exclude me, that they would somehow decide the fate of my soul together. Does any state get deeper than that?

The God I like to think of is a God of Love, not judgment or the exclusive God of the left or the right. If I want to take it further, God made me, he made Donald Trump, he made the media, and he even made Carol. And he made each of you.

For people of faith, shouldn’t that be enough for us to at least respect one another and follow our conscience?

I like the way Jesus Christ talks of Love. If he does return to earth, it will be just in the nick of time. We could use him now. Love is missing from our interactions with each other.

And where would Jesus fit into this discussion? I believe if he came around, he would love me too, because that is what he practiced and what he preached, except when it came to running off some greedy Priests in the Temple.

If I were a member of Congress, I would surely pray Jesus doesn’t return. It would not be pretty to see those grumpy old white men running for their lives across the Capitol Mall.

It would be sad if the first thing Jesus did was to come after my soul for writing something critical of  Donald Trump, who was not, when I last saw him, a Holy Man or likely to be the next Dalai Lama.

See?

There I am, going off again. Even while fighting for my very soul, I can’t resist getting another shot in. I put my trust int he love of God, not the hate.

How did Jesus define Love?

“It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable and resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,” 1 Corinthian.

Thank you, Jesus. I have no idea if you are the son of God or not, but I’m with you on Love: ” Love endures all things.”

Carol, here’s a bible passage for you to read, it’s from Corinthians 16:14. You have much to learn about God.

Maybe you could pass this passage along to the President. He was holding Ivanka’s Bible in front of that Church, but I’m sure she would loan it to him.

Corinthians 16-14Be wholly humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in Love. And Coronthians 13:4-8. And now these three remain faith, hope, and Love.