She had gotten mad at me about something and once she was willing to talk to me about it, I said to her, "If you would just learn one thing...you would not get mad at me very much anymore."
"What is it?" she asked quietly.
"If only you would believe that the thing I want most for you...the thing I want for you all the time every day is for you to be happy and have fun...you would not get mad at me for stuff like this." (this = the thing she was mad about at that moment)
And, that just struck me. It's just true. And, "everything that's knowable about God is evident in what He's made"...and that includes us. God calls us our Father...and if it's just true that I want my kids to be happy all the time...it's true for God, too.
The church...the more religious it gets the worse they are with "fun" and "happiness". The ultra-religious would have us believe that God is most pleased when we're somber, stoic, and quiet. God is even more pleased if we're suffering somehow for Him.
The church makes it almost that fun and happiness are "sin". Or, if you talk about the importance of fun and happiness they may agree...with a "yeah but..." word of caution. The church believes fun and pleasure are bad.
God designed the human brain that when it is denied "pleasure" as a baby...pathology develops. In the exciting read, "Early Deprivation of Empathic Care" by John Leopold Weil, MD, it is explained how important it is for the baby to receive empathic care from the primary caregiver to disrupt their states of displeasure and not disrupt their states of pleasure. And, in all cases, the human brain develops "coping strategies". All cases. Babies (one example) who are put on feeding schedules and are played with when they are hungry...develop coping mechanisms for that. Their brains suffer. God made their brains.
God clearly wants us to be happy and to experience pleasure. But, the religious mind can't read that sentence without freaking that somehow I'm promoting sin. "Woe to those who call good evil and evil good..."
The greatest crime in the universe really is to not know God. To not know WHO He is...
Christians will get into arguments about "is Allah just another name for God"...etc...when I do believe that even within the group who all call God "God" as in "Jehovah/Yahweh" of the Bible are talking about entirely different gods...
