A God in Our Own Image

It has always been interesting to me how you can meet so many people that all claim to believe in the same god, and yet their views of him and the ways that they describe his character are strictly individualistic. Or we can call those descriptions very “telling.” Their view of him is often small and flat…simple. To so many, the idea of god is a one-dimensional character with next-to-no depth or meaning. 

Now, I recognize and fully support the concept of god being an individual, and that each person knows him differently. But one distinct difference is when I meet people who only believe in god as long as he matches and agrees with all their accepted beliefs. Therefore, the only response upon meeting someone that doesn’t think the same way and has a concept of god that is different, is to assume that the other person simply doesn’t believe in god. How arrogant. How truly conceited. 

I have heard things like, “If you are a Christian, you can’t vote for so and so.” “How can you believe in god and think such and such is okay.” “People that do blah blah blah are going to hell because god doesn’t like that.” “That person believes whatever, and we know the truth.” “God shared it with us. And lucky, too, because if he hadn’t, we would be screwed just like those people that believe almost the same stuff as us, but they do that one thing that we don’t like.” 

Okay, fine, that last one is a stretch. But, still, it’s a thing and we all know it. 

So, my challenge is this. Have we been worshiping and pursuing a god that we are meant to reflect or one that we created in our own image? Did we fashion a being that we could agree with and support? Did we conjure up some made-to-order deity, and then demand that he fulfill all our wishes according to our own desires and understanding? 

And, if we did this, is that not the very definition of idolatry? Just because we didn’t create some image….Oh, wait. What’s that on the wall?

“But it’s a cross symbolizing Christ’s death for our sins! That’s not the same thing!” 

Okay, except that it isolated him to that one moment. One event. One thing, by which you solely benefit. What about the stuff that he does that you don’t like and you don’t agree with? What then? What happens when he doesn’t save you or someone that you love? What happens when he doesn't “prosper” you the way that you want or think you deserve? Does the child starving a thousand miles away pray to the same god that you pray to? Why, then, do you lose faith when he challenges your wealth, your ignorance and your shallow, immature, one-dimensional ideas of what god is supposed to look like?  

Well, maybe he doesn’t care what you think. Maybe he is confident in himself and his own abilities to do what he wants, when he wants, the way he wants. God is not limited by you or your miniscule concepts of what he is supposed to be. 

Yeshua himself obliterated the contemporary beliefs on who he was supposed to be. He destroyed the ideas of what “god” even meant. In fact, he so disagreed with the generally accepted concepts of the Jews’ beliefs regarding their own deity that they killed him for it. Oops. 

I got to tell you, if he is not regularly blowing the lid off of your tiny god box, what are you even doing? I mean, what do you do with yourself? Really. If you are not in a regular wrestling match with your own beliefs, do you even know yourself? I mean, no wonder the average person’s concept of god is so laughably small. Because, that god is based off of the selfish, small, arrogant, morally ambiguous, individual. Okay, okay, it makes sense now. God is so small to so many because, at the end of the day, it’s not him they are looking for, it’s themselves. They want a god that reflects them, not the other way around. A god in our own image.