WATER AND WAVE
The sense that Hell is incompatible with unconditional love and its ties to a God that seems ever-so conditional has quickly led me to the book store, where I've spent countless hours poring over books on theology and comparative religion in the pursuit of a theology that can salvage this slow-motion train wreck. After much desperate investigation, coming across Paul Tillich's profound conception of God as ground of being, I've finally stumbled upon something that may have teeth in Marcus Borg's The God We Never Knew. Borg presents convincing arguments for Panentheism, which holds that everything in the universe is of God, viz., of the same substance as God, while also maintaining that God is also more than the sum total of the universe.
Having considered this view of God, I am happy to say it's resolved my struggle concerning the flawed nature of humanity. How can I be a waste if I am in fact a part of God? On the contrary, this would explain why this world and everything inhabiting it are important to him. Because of this realization, for the first time in my life I can actually believe he loves me.
Additionally, I feel like my life has a purpose. I no longer feel worthless. All my life I've held myself in very low regard, feeling incapable of any good and only prone to weakness because of my sinful nature. Now everything has been turned on its head. For the first time, I feel empowered to participate in my own destiny. It will require patience and a dedication to being transformed by God from the inside out, but it's out there on the horizon now where I can finally see it rising like a mast from a distant ship at sea.