Yet another Gospel Message- one I apparently wrote in Feb 2001...

The other day, I found a near-decade-old printout of an e-mail I'd written a friend of a friend... For some reason, I gave my summary of The Gospel. As I read it, I thought "Dang, this is still pretty good!"... so here goes!

Life, the Universe and Everything is rooted in and flows out of the Triune God Who is Lover and Beloved and the Mutual Love among Them (aka Father and Son and Holy Spirit). Out of that Love, They created all of this and all of us. All the rules and regulations and laws and rewards and punishments They give us to live by is part of that same Triple Infolding Love.

Of course, by our first parents' acts of defiance and distrust and defensiveness against God, we are born into a whole cycle of distrust against God, each other and ourselves, which is why God gave us the Law and the Prophets to guide us through it.
Eventually, He dove into the middle of this chaos as Jesus- God Who takes on human life from the inside and Who takes on Himself all the punishment for what has gone wrong and then overcomes it by His Resurrection- which He then invites us to join in through trusting and loving Him.

Now, it is our choice to what extent we will love and trust and commit ourselves to Him and allow His Spirit to flow through us~ and based on those choises is the degree we will know His grace and peace in this life and face reward and punishment in the Afterlife. Fortunately, that same Love that kindled all lives is the same Love that lived and died and rose as Jesus and will be the same Love that pursues us in this life and the Afterlife.

Everything that can be redeemed about our lives will be redeemed. Everything that cannot be salvaged in our lives will be trashed and burned in the Fire of God's Awful Love. It will hurt agonizingly the same way intensive psychotherapy and radical surgery and a refinery furnace hurts but it will also be part of God/Jesus's Redeeming Love. It may be that some people will be so bound up in resistance to that Love that the Fire may leave little to nothing of them left to be redeemed. However, I also trust God/Jesus enough to trust that most of us, when fully confronted by Him, will just melt.

Amen!