ciroccoj | Apparently, I am a Lutheran god. Who knew?

So I'm going through The Story of the World, Volume II, because we're going to wrap up the Middle Ages these next few weeks. I'm reading the chapter on the beginning of Protestantism, and find this passage describing Martin Luther's ideas about God:

[Martin Luther] thought to himself, "The book of Romans doesn't tell me that I have to earn God's love by working hard to be good. No, no! It says that God gives me the power to believe in him, and the power to be good, because he already loves me!" This changed Martin's way of thinking about God! Later, he said, "It seemed to me as if I had been born again, and as if I had entered paradise through newly opened doors."

Think about it this way: Imagine that you have two aunts. Both of them say that they love you. But the first aunt lives in a very clean house with a white rug on the floor. When you come to visit her, she opens the door and looks at you very carefully to see if your hands and shoes and face are clean before she lets you in. She invites you to have hot chocolate and cookies with her, but you have to sit on a white velvet couch while you eat. During your snack, she keeps checking to see whether you are sitting straight and chewing with your mouth closed. When you drip a little bit of hot chocolate on the sofa, she gets rubber gloves, a big bucket of hot soapy water, and a sponge. She makes you scrub at the stain, but it won't come off. So she shouts, "Leave this house at once, and don't come back until you learn how to eat neatly!"

Now imagine that you go to see the second aunt. She throws her door open and says, "I'm so glad to see you! Come in!" And she hugs you even though you've been playing in the dirt. You get a little bit of mud on her apron, but she dusts it off and says, "Why don't you wash your hands before you have a snack?"

The bathroom has good smelling hand soap and big blue towels in it. After you wash your hands, she takes you into the kitchen and sits you down at a big wooden table for your cookies and hot chocolate. When you spill a little, she gives you a napkin and says, "That's not the worst thing that's been spilt on this table!" When your snack is done, she says, "Let's go upstairs and do some finger-painting in the playroom, and then you can have a bubble bath to wash off."

Which aunt would you rather go see? The first aunt is a little bit like the way Martin Luther used to think of God. The second aunt is more like the way he learned to think about God after reading Romans.

BTW, yes, I know it's summer, but (a) home schooled kids don't do breaks at the same time as everyone else and (b) the boys asked me to continue history year-round. It's more like stories & games & crafts than real schoolwork anyway.