Niq Ruud grew up amongst the vistas of the Pacific Northwest, hooking him on alpine climbing, surfing, and storytelling. Since earning an undergraduate degree in religion, graduating from seminary, and working as a pastor, he is presently a postgraduate at The University of Edinburgh keenly interested in the human perception of God. You can connect with him at niqruud.com and @niqruud on Instagram. 

I get to talk to him about his newly released book, "Only Love: How Everything Was, Is, and Will Be". In it, he talks about how he lied saying he couldn’t smell for nearly a decade. He lived in his car during college to afford tuition. He got lost in a blizzard during his first mountaineering trip then learned to ski a few months later while climbing Mount Rainier. He saved his little sister from a kidnapper by leaping from a plum tree with a Nerf toy while they were children. And it is with wit and a scholar’s touch that he uses these and many other stories to wrestle with the question: What if the deity you grew up learning about in church doesn’t exist?

For while the God of the Christian tradition is often said to be good, that same God doesn’t seem to shy away from endorsing genocide, homophobia, racism, sexism, or eternal damnation; leading many persons of faith to justify violence and oppressive behaviors for thousands of years. But in this book, Ruud works readers into the supposition that God desires none of those things. And, on the contrary, with a theology that pushes the boundaries of God much larger than we might ever imagine, he argues that the only god who can truly be good is a God of other-centered, self-sacrificial love. The implications as to what a God of only love means, for everything, are vast—because everything changes when we see God as nothing more and nothing less than love.