Without being Overbearing

Have you met a conceited person before? Scratch that. Have you met a self-confident person before? Nobody wants to be called a conceited person, but most times what we call self-confidence is just conceit in a cassock.

It’s easy to get carried away when we are convinced in our hearts that we’re doing the right thing for the greater good.  It’s even easier when our actions are endorsed by our peers or current trends. For most people, there is no greater motivation than majority approval; after all ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’. This isn’t true. In fact most times the voice of the people is against the voice of God, so don’t get carried away with the loud noise.

Now, apparently it’s not satisfying enough to pursue a personal conviction to its logical conclusion, people sometimes feel obligated to go beyond just sharing those convictions, to making others believe with them. Check radicalization. They’ve seen the light, so all those ignorant people in darkness need their eyes opened.

God is Almighty. That is, His unlimited power supersedes every other power that has existed and that could ever exist, put together. He could easily have imposed His goodness on humanity, and caused us to walk in His good ways. It’s not like He’s deluded about His goodness, all creation testifies¹. The entire universe is an everlasting witness to His righteous acts. Yet He didn’t force His will down our throats, He let us have our own. He gave us choices right from the beginning, and even when we messed up at the first opportunity He didn’t take away that ability to choose, even if it meant we’d choose other gods.

The absence of an imposition of the Divine counsel offers us the opportunity to love God truly, for true love is impossible in the absence of an alternative. He is our only Way because all the others go in circles, and His voice is our only Truth because all others lie eventually. He is the Life, not because He told us so, but obviously everyone else is dead or dying².

God is good. It’s not a meaningless statement carried on the wings of history, it’s the eternal confession of everyone who has met Him.

¹ Ps 19:1, Oldest person alive

² 1Pet 1:24,25