A doggedly Human God

As my children grow and ask for a pet dog, I find myself revisiting every dog I’ve known in my life and what they’ve meant to me. Well, that was a quick revisit because I’m NOT an animal lover and animals mean nothing at all to me. (Pet lovers, please keep reading). But I have many friends and family to whom their pet dogs have meant a lot, surely even more than I mean to them. As I look upon their profound devotion to their dogs, I can’t help but wonder what it is that they get from that relationship. For me, an animal who can’t feed or clean itself just means one more being that I have to be wholly responsible for. In addition, unlike humans, pets will never grow up and start giving themselves a bath, so this is a long-term daily responsibility.

 

I’ve heard from dog lovers that their dog loves them unconditionally and is always attentive to their every emotional need that allegedly even other humans can’t pick up. I heard someone tell me once as we were discussing a family in severe crises, that it was their dog who saved their lives. Way before ‘face-palm’ was invented, I wanted to face-palm with a loud slap when I heard that, but I didn’t because I was in a public place. Unfortunately for that family, that dog and successive family dogs have since aged and died and that family is still very much in need of saving. But the very mention of the name of those dogs will provoke tears and many emotional memories. For pet lovers, they do genuinely feel very loved by their dogs. This morning, in my prayer time, I realized that maybe they feel loved by their dogs because their dogs can’t say NO. Dogs by nature will respond positively to people who feed and care for them. They do not have a natural capacity to say NO. They do not have free will to say NO. They can’t say: no, I don’t love you back OR no, don’t relocate me because you got a new, big, fancy job or NO, don’t leave me with the animal shelter because you want to go on vacation. They cannot resist their human’s authority over them. They cannot reject any move their humans make, except to run away. So, either they stay and “love you back” or they run away because we don’t treat them well.

Humans on the other hand, including both babies and the elderly can receive all your loving caregiving and still reject you. They can yell back, they can physically resist you, they can choose to hold their love back from you irrespective of how well you treat them. So, humans are extremely risky to love. Because we have free will. We can reject someone for no reason at all OR we can commit to someone and then change our minds and walk away.

 

And yet, God Himself chose to become a vulnerable baby, live among us rejecting humans and die for us, knowing fully well that we have free will to reject his offer of eternal salvation.

 

Now, THAT is love.

Not loving those who you know don’t have the free will to refuse and hence will return your affection and loyalty.

But loving those who can and choose to reject you for no reason at all, inspite of you giving your all for them.

 

In becoming a tiny hapless baby, God choose to expose Himself to constant rejection from us. He showed us that in His free will as both God and Human, He loves us freely.

 

He could have given up on all of us after a few attempts with Adam, Noah and Abraham. He could have given us the treatment we are due because of how we have behaved with Him, His creation and each other. He could have left to us our own devices, letting us face the eternal consequences of our own pride and foolishness. But He doggedly pursued us, sending prophet after prophet and then finally His own Son, to live within our miserable reality and share in our miserable humanity until He could die for us to save us, still not knowing whether us risky humans would accept His free gift of salvation or reject Him.

 

Love took the risk.

Love took the rejection.

Love took the fall.

Love took the weight of it all.

 

At any point in my life, I have the free will to go back to who I used to be, to reject all the love He’s showered on me, to choose to give my whole heart, mind and soul to someone or worse still something other than the One who died for me.

 

And still, He will doggedly pursue me until my last breath, hoping that I will turn back to face Him with a genuinely sorry heart.

 

Now, THAT is love.