ON THE INNOCENCE OF GOD

Sometimes a thought will come to me, gangly limbed and gasping for breath. It’s fully formed, but not mature. It can’t stand on its own. You have to hold its head very carefully, support its neck, wrap it and nurse it. The thought is magnificent and ordinary, full of potential, certain to go the way of all living things.

When a thought like this comes to me, I wish that I were smarter. It is so beautiful, and I am so afraid of wrecking it.

I was thinking about how much I love a good paradox, and about how God seems so comfortable being two contradictory, mutually exclusive things at the same time. Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Living water, all-consuming fire. Lion, lamb. Father, son. A God far off, a God in our heart.

I was thinking about wisdom, and about what might be the opposite of wise – wondering if perhaps God could exist at the other end of that pendulum.

What if the opposite of wise is not foolish, but innocent?

What if God is innocent?

Innocent, the way a child is innocent – the way a child doesn’t even know what sin is. Innocent, the way a baby is born into this world, not knowing anger or greed, revenge, malice, envy or spite – completely incapable of comprehending it, completely incapable of passing judgment on it.

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing – but there is something in it sometimes that smacks a little, and leaves me wanting. Some small, insolent voice within me wants to say to God, Thank You for forgiving me – but You know, I did not ask to be born. I’m glad that You love me in spite of it, but I did not ask for this damning sin-nature from which there is no escape. I’d just like to have that on the record.

But what if it isn’t all only about forgiveness? What if there is something within the nature of God – not only a generous nobility but an impossible purity – that is able to hold both wisdom and innocence in balance, the way God balances time within eternity, the way God stretches the east from the west, the way God pulls taut the beginning from the end to the edges of infinity.

What if God is able to look upon us with innocent eyes and simply not see our failings? What if it is not only that God forgives our sins, atones for them, washes them away, but also that in some incomprehensible way God is simply unable to comprehend them.

Sin does not exist to the eyes of the innocent – did not exist in the eyes of the God of all wisdom formed into flesh, wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger.

What does it mean for God to look at us with purity, to forget our sin and to remember it no more?

What does that mean for us, if God is able to look upon us and love us, not in spite of our sin, but in complete innocence of it?