The Nature of God

2:5.1“God is love”; there­fore his only per­sonal at­ti­tude to­wards the af­fairs of the uni­verse is al­ways a re­ac­tion of di­vine af­fec­tion. The Fa­ther loves us suf­fi­ciently to be­stow his life upon us. “He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the un­just.”

2:5.2It is wrong to think of God as be­ing coaxed into lov­ing his chil­dren be­cause of the sac­ri­fices of his Sons or the in­ter­ces­sion of his sub­or­di­nate crea­tures, “for the Fa­ther him­self loves you.” It is in re­sponse to this pa­ter­nal af­fec­tion that God sends the mar­velous Ad­justers to in­dwell the minds of men. God’s love is uni­ver­sal; “whoso­ever will may come.” He would “have all men be saved by com­ing into the knowl­edge of the truth.” He is “not will­ing that any should per­ish.”

2:5.3The Cre­ators are the very first to at­tempt to save man from the dis­as­trous re­sults of his fool­ish trans­gres­sion of the di­vine laws. God’s love is by na­ture a fa­therly af­fec­tion; there­fore does he some­times “chas­ten us for our own profit, that we may be par­tak­ers of his ho­li­ness.” Even dur­ing your fiery tri­als re­mem­ber that “in all our af­flic­tions he is af­flicted with us.”

2:5.4God is di­vinely kind to sin­ners. When rebels re­turn to righ­teous­ness, they are mer­ci­fully re­ceived, “for our God will abun­dantly par­don.” “I am he who blots out your trans­gres­sions for my own sake, and I will not re­mem­ber your sins.” “Be­hold what man­ner of love the Fa­ther has be­stowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”

2:5.5Af­ter all, the great­est ev­i­dence of the good­ness of God and the su­preme rea­son for lov­ing him is the in­dwelling gift of the Fa­ther—the Ad­juster who so pa­tiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eter­nally made one. Though you can­not find God by search­ing, if you will sub­mit to the lead­ing of the in­dwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step by step, life by life, through uni­verse upon uni­verse, and age by age, un­til you fi­nally stand in the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

2:5.6How un­rea­son­able that you should not wor­ship God be­cause the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man na­ture and the hand­i­caps of your ma­te­rial cre­ation make it im­pos­si­ble for you to see him. Be­tween you and God there is a tremen­dous dis­tance (phys­i­cal space) to be tra­versed. There like­wise ex­ists a great gulf of spir­i­tual dif­fer­en­tial which must be bridged; but not­with­stand­ing all that phys­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally sep­a­rates you from the Par­a­dise per­sonal pres­ence of God, stop and pon­der the solemn fact that God lives within you; he has in his own way al­ready bridged the gulf. He has sent of him­self, his spirit, to live in you and to toil with you as you pur­sue your eter­nal uni­verse ca­reer.

2:5.7I find it easy and pleas­ant to wor­ship one who is so great and at the same time so af­fec­tion­ately de­voted to the up­lift­ing min­istry of his lowly crea­tures. I nat­u­rally love one who is so pow­er­ful in cre­ation and in the con­trol thereof, and yet who is so per­fect in good­ness and so faith­ful in the lov­ing-kind­ness which con­stantly over­shad­ows us. I think I would love God just as much if he were not so great and pow­er­ful, as long as he is so good and mer­ci­ful. We all love the Fa­ther more be­cause of his na­ture than in rec­og­ni­tion of his amaz­ing at­tri­butes.

2:5.8When I ob­serve the Cre­ator Sons and their sub­or­di­nate ad­min­is­tra­tors strug­gling so valiantly with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of time in­her­ent in the evo­lu­tion of the uni­verses of space, I dis­cover that I bear these lesser rulers of the uni­verses a great and pro­found af­fec­tion. Af­ter all, I think we all, in­clud­ing the mor­tals of the realms, love the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and all other be­ings, di­vine or hu­man, be­cause we dis­cern that these per­son­al­i­ties truly love us. The ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing is very much a di­rect re­sponse to the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing loved. Know­ing that God loves me, I should con­tinue to love him su­premely, even though he were di­vested of all his at­tri­butes of su­prem­acy, ul­ti­macy, and ab­so­lute­ness.

2:5.9The Fa­ther’s love fol­lows us now and through­out the end­less cir­cle of the eter­nal ages. As you pon­der the lov­ing na­ture of God, there is only one rea­son­able and nat­u­ral per­son­al­ity re­ac­tion thereto: You will in­creas­ingly love your Maker; you will yield to God an af­fec­tion anal­o­gous to that given by a child to an earthly par­ent; for, as a fa­ther, a real fa­ther, a true fa­ther, loves his chil­dren, so the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther loves and for­ever seeks the wel­fare of his cre­ated sons and daugh­ters.

2:5.10But the love of God is an in­tel­li­gent and farsee­ing pa­ren­tal af­fec­tion. The di­vine love func­tions in uni­fied as­so­ci­a­tion with di­vine wis­dom and all other in­fi­nite char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­fect na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God is love, but love is not God. The great­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the di­vine love for mor­tal be­ings is ob­served in the be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers, but your great­est rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s love is seen in the be­stowal life of his Son Mi­chael as he lived on earth the ideal spir­i­tual life. It is the in­dwelling Ad­juster who in­di­vid­u­al­izes the love of God to each hu­man soul.

2:5.11At times I am al­most pained to be com­pelled to por­tray the di­vine af­fec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his uni­verse chil­dren by the em­ploy­ment of the hu­man word sym­bol love. This term, even though it does con­note man’s high­est con­cept of the mor­tal re­la­tions of re­spect and de­vo­tion, is so fre­quently des­ig­na­tive of so much of hu­man re­la­tion­ship that is wholly ig­no­ble and ut­terly un­fit to be known by any word which is also used to in­di­cate the match­less af­fec­tion of the liv­ing God for his uni­verse crea­tures! How un­for­tu­nate that I can­not make use of some su­per­nal and ex­clu­sive term which would con­vey to the mind of man the true na­ture and ex­qui­sitely beau­ti­ful sig­nif­i­cance of the di­vine af­fec­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

2:5.12When man loses sight of the love of a per­sonal God, the king­dom of God be­comes merely the king­dom of good. Not­with­stand­ing the in­fi­nite unity of the di­vine na­ture, love is the dom­i­nant char­ac­ter­is­tic of all God’s per­sonal deal­ings with his crea­tures.