Who Is Your God?

As Christians we are called to love God above all else simply because God loves us unconditionally. There is nothing we can do that will make God stop loving us. There is much we can do and in fact do that causes God anguish and pain. God is never pleased with our selfishness, nor should we be either. But no mater how selfish we are, God will never cease to love us or love us less than totally. That is our God.

     Or is it? Who is your God, my God, our God? My cyber friend Molly Wolf reminds us that there is God. There are also other gods who try to prevent us from loving our God with all our heart and mind and strength. These gods try to diminish our ability to love not only others but ourselves as well in the same way and to the same degree as we are to love our God. She says this about these gods:

     “You can't pass on God's love [to others] if your god is not loving. Maybe the only god we've been offered is a god of judgment and reproof, of triumphalism or revenge -- a god whom we beg to stomp the enemy flat. Or we've been handed a god who's distant, remote, impassive, allowing hurt to happen according to some inscrutable plan. Or maybe the only god we think can save us is the god of the common culture, a god of success and prosperity, of popularity and good looks – a god whose ‘love’ (if you want to call it that) is endlessly conditional on our being exactly right, by standards none of us can ever possibly meet. There are so many gods out there who can come between us and God's own steady, unbending love.”

     Not only are there other gods out there who do this or try to do this to us, we also do it to ourselves. On the one hand we want our God to totally forgiving and kind and generous and loving when it comes to us personally. When it comes to others, we are not so certain we like it that way, especially when it comes to Judgment Day. For the truth is, if we are going to be judged by Jesus’ standards of Matthew 25 – how well we have tended to the needs of the last, least, lost and forgotten of this world – we will all be on the outside looking in. We do a good job. But, as Katrina reminds us, that job has not been done well enough.

     Not only that, as Katrina also reminds us, we want those who have caused so much pain and suffering to occur and/or who could have done something to prevent it to be punished for their failures and offenses. We want them punished both now and in the hereafter, especially, as the late Simon Wiesenthal would remind us, if their offenses are simply beyond comprehension. We want a god who both demands an eye for an eye but also extracts that pound of flesh in the process – on others, of course.

     It is so very easy to limit our God. And we do. And when we do, what we wind up with is a god who is not God. And that is what we do so often, if we are honest enough to admit it. We make our god-who-is-not-God into our own image and likeness. What is even worse is that we do it without realizing that we are doing it.

     We have allowed too many false gods, not only all those Molly Wolf names but also those of our own whom we can add to her list, to come between us and God’s total and unconditional love for us. We need to name those gods for who and what they are and rid ourselves of them. WJP