Last week I went to visit my son in Virginia. He and his wife moved three thousand miles away because of work. They own a house and have built a life there with friends, but no family. Alex plays tennis and is one of the better players on his teams. He has leadership positions at work, moving up the corporate ladder. We had a lot of time to talk while driving to a tennis match three hours away that was canceled due to rain. When he was younger, he would have been very upset, but now he took it all in stride. He is in the process of installing a beautiful wood floor in his home, something we did in my house when he was young. He and I also did some work around his house, putting up a lamp, getting some shutters, and fixing a shower valve. He was the craftsman and I was his helper. We had a great time, at least I did.
I loved him as a child. We called him “cutest man” because even as a baby he looked like a little man. He was intense, focused. He knew what he wanted, and we supplied it. When he was a toddler, I would follow him around and point, “Look how cute he is!” My mom would tell me that I was spoiling him, but I didn’t care.
As a father, I want my children to become adults. I don’t want them to be children forever. Alex grew up. Though I loved his childhood, I am so happy that we are now peers. He will always be my son, but has become my equal, except, perhaps, in experience. His ways are different. He doesn’t do what I would do. He wants different things. He has his own ideas and opinions about politics, economics, God, and man. He is making his own life. I see that in many ways he is a better man than I was at his age. It’s good to be different, that’s what makes being with him so enjoyable.
As humans we often appreciate sameness, enjoying people who are like us. We even expect our children to be “a chip off the ol’ block.” And we reject those who think and act differently, creating “us” and “them.” God is just the opposite. He doesn’t love us for our sameness; He loves all the ways that we are different from Him. He wants all to come to Him with their unique talents, abilities, thoughts, and ideas. This is how the love of God is different from that of mankind. If you love differences, and everyone is unique, then you love everyone.
The creeds describe a God whose love is complete within the Trinity, three Persons sharing one nature, one mind, one will. But that is love of the same. Sameness is merely self-love extended. Love is always directed toward someone else. It takes difference to make love real. To say God "lacks nothing" is true of His power but not true of His love: a being with infinite capacity to love, and no one to love who is not different from Himself, is a being whose love is never actually fulfilled.
God has no need to create servants, sycophants, or yes-men. He is omnipotent and omniscient and has no need of anything. But also, God is love, and love must have a beloved. He wants children out of His love. Children who are truly loved are meant to become adults with individual personalities. He wants them to grow up and become His peers — beings who are paradoxically like Him and yet profoundly unlike Him, each adding something to His glory that nothing else could add. Their differences are not a flaw in His creation; they are the very point of it. The God who wanted automatons would still be lonely.
To fulfill His love, God wants His children to know Him. Each would see Him from a different point, each angle revealing a glory the others cannot. John explained that “...when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) But “like Him” does not mean a carbon copy, rather it is to have His power, to possess what He has, and to know what He knows. It is to become as God, able “to know good and evil (See Genesis 3:22). To know God is not to be the same, but to love as He loves.
If sameness were a requirement to be in heaven, then Jesus would be the only one there. And this is what Christ came to do: not to be the only One to return, nor to rescue a remnant and leave the rest to burn, but to make possible what God has always wanted — a heaven filled with beings who are not copies of Him, but peers. Each with a face no one else has, adding a glory no one else could. We came to earth to experience evil, but this leaves us unfit to live with God. The need for Christ is that He paid the price to clean us from our sojourn in the dirt of the world. The requirement for salvation is repentance, not to make us the same as Him, but to become submissive to Him while retaining our own personality. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, heaven will be filled with His children. God is His Father, and our Father.
God dearly wants everyone but lets them choose, which is the basis of diversity. Though Jesus paid the price for all to be with God, many will not accept His offer. All are given agency to choose to be with God, or not. Jesus said, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:14) Few seek the Highest, most are content with a lesser portion, not being repentant. Those few who do find the path of repentance and turn to Christ will be led to the Father and enjoy eternal life with Him. They share His glory, inheriting all that He has. Though it be relatively few of all His creations, God will have children who grow up to be peers, like their Father.
My cutest little boy has grown up to become a man. I gave him all I could, and now he makes his own choices. He lives on the opposite coast. He does some things I taught him — flooring, electrical, plumbing, home repairs — and some things he learned from his mother, like tennis. But he has a life I did not plan for him, opinions I didn't give him, a God he has found in his own way. He is not a chip off my block. He is his own block, which may only be colored by mine. And I love him more for it. His unique abilities add to me. My life is greater because he is different from me. If God is anything like a father — and I believe He is — then this is what He wants from all of us: not copies, but children, grown-up, and independent.
