Would there be more christians if we didn’t misunderstand God?
I’ve been thinking on a certain subject lately, and I keep coming around to the fact that we truly misunderstand God on a daily basis.
We think that because there is evil in the world, this means that God must be evil, right?
Although I understand these questions from a humankind viewpoint, they are never able to be asked with the full perspective of the world. God is all knowing and all loving.
He loves us. So, are we getting it wrong?
I’ve recently been in and out of a book called, The Misunderstood God. You can get it for about 8 bucks. So far, it’s pretty good. The author really dives into God’s relationship with us and that because of our nature, we tend to give human characteristics to God. Although, I don’t agree with all the viewpoints the author gives. Like many books, you can read it and disagree with some of it and still get the point.
In the book, these human characteristics cause God to be proud, unforgiving, disgusted, etc.
I think we fail to remember that God created us to have a relationship with him, though.
The author relates a lot of our feelings to God as our father.
For example — If you have kids, do you discipline them? If you don’t have kids, will you discipline them?
Does this discipline mean that you don’t love them? Or is it evidence to the contrary?
We discipline our kids to instruct, teach, and help them grow, right? We want them to be the best person they can be when they grow up and meet the world as adults.
Do parents want their kids to always be comfortable? Not necessarily. I know my mom ragged on me to go get a job when I was 16. At the time, I thought she was hard on me.
I think we’re like this toward God when he calls us to do something difficult, or something that is going to pull us out of our comfortable life. We may even feel like this when we have to go through something hard, or watch a family member struggle with a sickness.
Contrary to what you may believe, he does this because he loves us, wants us to grow and learn, and wants to bless us, so that we can bless others.
So, where’d we get this view that God is just ready to strike us down every time we do something bad?
Of course, he calls us to repent. Jesus came and called us to repent for our sins.
When we were younger and our parents said, “what do you say?”, it usually was followed by, “I’m sorry”. Now, God knows our true heart and he knows whether or not we’re really sorry, but that’s another discussion.
The point I wanted to make today was that I think people view God as a tyrant rather than a father. Some people even want God to be a tyrant. They want him to be this authoritative figure in the sky that abolishes us for screwing up once, so that they can be a part of some “rebellion”.
That is just not the truth. God not only created us to have free will, but he also created a way for us to be forgiven when we stray from the path that he set forth. This all-knowing God decided to not only let us choose to drift away, but he also sent his son to die for us so that we can be reconciled. He actually pursues us.
I just think more of us would follow him if God wasn’t so misunderstood.
