Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

Goff regularly speaks for God, sometimes with absolute certainty and sometimes in conjecture. In every case, however, his discussions of God’s intentions, purpose, and communication are expressed in very human terms that are completely comprehensible. For instance, when speculating about the death of his TSA friend Adrian, Goff ventures that there are divine reasons for Adrian’s death:

I’ve got quite a few questions about why Adrian passed. Perhaps that’s why God made eternity last so long—He knew it would take a while to explain what He was doing. Before you decide why things have happened in your past or are happening now, wait for God to whisper the reasons to you. It will be worth the wait (114).

This passage describes God as a person who will approach individual human beings and speak to them. It implies that God has divine reasons for every significant thing that occurs in human life and intends to explain the master plan to us individually when humanity gathers in heaven. In this quote, as with his other expressions of God’s thoughts and intentions, Goff portrays God as comprehensible and reasonable. Goff gives Jesus the same treatment. He implies not only that humans can grasp divine purposes and that God and Jesus are concerned that we know those purposes, but also that Goff is capable of speculating confidently about God and Jesus.