Cut-and-paste God

I heard somewhere once a quote that went roughly like this: "It is easy for a person who has a problem with a repetitive sin to believe in a forgiving God.  It is easy for a person who has been hurt to believe in a God who punishes wrong-doers.  It's more difficult for the repetitive sinner to believe in the God who punishes wrong-doers and the hurt person to believe in the God who forgives."

We all have our different wants in life, but sometimes those demands begin to shape our image of God. We focus on God's power to forgive or to seek justice but ignore the other aspects of Him.  We imagine God to be something like Santa Clause, who gives us what we ask for but leaves us alone otherwise. We believe in God the Father but not God the King because we can love Him, as long as we don't have to fear Him.

But our cut-and-paste images of God will not stand. They will crumble at the first sign of trouble because in order to choose some of God's qualities while ignoring others, we have to lie to ourselves about who He is.  And lying to yourself is one of the most exhausting tasks in the world.

My God is your God and He does not change-- not from person to person nor between cultures and times.  Choosing to except God as He is liberates us from having to play the role of referee and allows us to better learn to solve our problems rather than fight the solution.

And when we begin to know God, I mean really know Him, we start to realize the beauty of who He is rather than longing for what He is not.

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