A Mirror Darkly?

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After working the voting precinct last week, I’m still processing. But one thing that’s coming up over and over again, is how much people around me espouse a God who looks like them. Acts like them. Believes what they believe.

Not that they believe what God believes. Their God believes what they do. Their God has opinions on weaknesses, in particular, that don’t align with the New Testament Jesus. You only have to read the New Testament once to understand, God has been redesigned. And to my, well, frightened eyes, he sounds in their mouths like an angry white guy.

This freaks me out, because at first it made me feel superior; I was on the right side of God! Our God is an Awesome God, a Mighty God, a God we seek to know. To Know God and make God known -I am doing it correctly!

And then I started to drill down in my own life, what I believed about God, what God wanted from me, what I was meant to be doing…..

….and it sure looked a lot like what I wanted to do. Like what made me comfortable. Like what benefited me. Like everyone else should think like me, understand God with the depth that I do.

My God is ethnocentric? Help us, Jesus. God in the hands of angry sinners is a terrible thing to contemplate.

So these days my prayer is, Jesus, help me interpret what I’m seeing in front of me the way you want me to. You gave us all personalities, you say in the Bible that some are hands and some are ears (and that means at least one of us has to be the liver). So okay, we have to be who you formed us to be and we see the world through the eyes you gave us.

But dear Jesus, please don’t let me reform you into who I decided I needed you to be, rather than who you are. That’s going to be way more important soon. This is going to get ugly. Don’t let me believe in the angry white guy God, and please don’t let me redesign God into a tree hugger who thinks everyone could benefit from a warm chocolate chip cookie, either. I’m listening, carefully, and with a lot more humility now. Help, please. Thank you.

11 thoughts on “A Mirror Darkly?”

  3. Thank you Wendy for this article. It reminded me of why I no longer call myself a Christian. Folks have not only made God on their own image but Christ as well. The noun Christian, like the word evangelical, has been co-opted and corrupted by the people today who would be cheering and pleading for Pilate to reach Barabas instead of Jesus. These people ignore and fear the truth. They’ve made a mockery of the Christian faith.
    Someone once said, ‘you can be sure that if God hates those you hate, loves those you love, thinks as you think, and believes what you believe, you have created a god in your image.’ I fear this person is correct.

    This is why I now refer to myself as a God Follower, Christ Follower, Disciple, or follower of The Way.
    I shall do all I can to submit my life to follow the example, teachings, and ways of Jesus.

    Again, your article, at least from my perspective, is spot on!!!’

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  5. I’ve thought that if you really want to know a group/a culture, see what they say about God. They tell an awful lot about themselves by what they project God to think and say and do. That projection gives them license to tell their truth because it isn’t THEM disapproving or judging; it’s GOD. I loved the Bill Moyers line that no one ever had a vision and said “I know who God’s chosen people are and it’s those guys over there.”

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