Is God Indifferent or Loving Towards Us?

"In the Christian tradition I was born into, God is much involved with the characters – loves them, punishes them. But you say the screen is completely impartial to whatever appears on it. Is there no practical relation? Is it just indifference? Rupert says: ‘The screen doesn’t love or punish the characters. The screen is completely impartial, one with but completely indifferent to the characters. It’s only the different characters in the movie that love each other or punish each other. The ultimate reality is not a wrathful, punishing, fearful God. Loving – if by love you mean utterly, intimately, indiscriminately one with, then it is. We have to distinguish between love as a feeling between two people and real love, which is the absence of otherness, the absence of twoness. Real love is unity. For infinite consciousness, there are not two. There’s just one. So this absence of otherness, this oneness is pure love. This is actually what you feel when you love someone – the distance between you diminishes. So God is pure love, because God knows no other. If we make a concession to the belief that there are separate people, then it is legitimate to say God loves you. But I don’t think it would ever be legitimate to say God hates you or punishes you, because the statement that God loves you is a true statement about God’s nature, whereas the statement that God hates you or punishes you is not a true statement of the true nature of God."

From event 30 August - 06 September, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at Mandali, 30 August–6 September 2025

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