A God of Consent

One afternoon, while wrapping up the day with my coworkers, one of them, a good friend, asked, “What is something that is core to what you believe about God? Something you will not budge on about God?” This friend happens to be an excellent pastor and preacher, and he was preparing for a sermon. The handful of folks around gave different answers; pretty much each I agreed with. 

“God is good.” “God loves me.” “God is powerful.” “God has a sense of humor.”

He looked at me expectantly. He knew I loved these types of conversations and had strong opinions, loosely held.

I responded, “God is a God of consent.”

And I meant it. Deeply. This statement was not an opinion but a belief I hold tight. This is something I’ll fight for. So what do I mean by it?

In its simplest form, I mean that covenantal love does not exist without consent, and God loves us more deeply than we can ever comprehend. 

My theological framework has been built on this truth. 

A framework built on God’s attribute of love and how I understand love exists in fullness. God is not only a loving Creator, but as 1 John 4: 8 states, “God is love,” which is why the capacity to love exists in us. I believe that to love fully requires both consent and risk.  Agency to choose is necessary on both sides. Love creates the risk of loss because in the sincere extending of choice to be in a relationship, power must be put aside, and rejection of the offer must be a real possibility. Power is set aside when we express a desire for connection with another. All while knowing that we may be rejected when we extend that invitation. This invitation is personified in and extended by Jesus Christ, who demonstrated the fullness of love through his incarnation and laying down power unto death.

Informed consent of salvation through Jesus includes the eternal component of a mutual relationship with our Creator, not just a get-out-of-hell-free card given by a more powerful being to a lesser. That would be a transaction, good math, not faith.

This belief has coalesced into clarity throughout my adult life so far. It has always lived in me, an inworking of the Holy Spirit to help me know my Creator and the offer of relationship extended by them. 

That small, still voice…sometimes an intense sense of presence saying, “I love you.” 

As I’ve come to embrace this, in the most challenging and isolating times, the Holy Spirit will remind me, “I am yours, and you are mine.” The unconquerable grieving and pain I’d feel was not something I had to hold on my own. The grief, pain, and sadness did not disappear, but if I allowed myself to be present where I could, God would find a way to remind me that they were present, too. They would hold what I could not bear and never despise or resent me for it. They would carry the burden of outcomes. I did not have to fix or change the overwhelming, the impossible. God would be responsible for those. No, my Creator would love me all the more for trusting them in the midst of it all; for being fully, finitely, and fragilely human.

Even though I’ve consented to a relationship with God, my Creator often awaits invitation into aspects of my life. Each invitation is a reconnection, a reminder that I do not have to be alone. Each invitation communicates that God has chosen to be with me, no matter how big or small my need for them in a moment may be. 

Yes, God may intervene at any time and may do so in the most dire of situations, but so goes love. We place ourselves in the line of fire, we risk ourselves to protect those most precious to us. God being moved in big and small ways toward us does not remove the aspect of consent. “I am yours, and you are mine.” Often those interventions are declarations of “I am here with you,” not the removal of our agency. 

And our agency matters. God did not create us to be automatons. We were uniquely made, created from the abundance of our God to be an extension of Their community. We were meant to interact and be in an active relationship with our Creator, in relationship with one another. We are not pets, though we certainly could have been. Instead, we were given the ability to know and imagine beyond the tangible, to share stories and ideas that transmit what doesn’t exist to those who have never had those ideas before. We have the ability to create, not only to imitate. To create and imagine larger than we are and into a future we will not be present for. 

Our ability to create is not limited to utility. Like our Creator, we can be artists. We can create art, all sorts of beautiful things that add value through their ability to stir others in profound ways or for a healing moment of delight.

From the moment life was breathed into humanity, we were gifted with agency. To choose to obey, to disobey. To choose big and small. To choose

To be loved by God means we have been chosen to be loved. To reciprocate, we must, too, be able to choose. How we are invited into a relationship and how we accept or reject is unique to each person. God, specifically Jesus, may be known to you in ways I do not. Your relationship is unique in so many ways, though love is the constant. 

Love cannot flourish when one controls another. We can be tethered together, but that connection cannot be a leash. God does not seek to control, they could easily do so if that was the desire in the design. The desire is to be connected for the joy of mutual flourishing.