Perceptions of God

I consider myself a Christian, meaning that I believe in Jesus Christ. However, while I consider myself a spiritual person, I don’t consider myself a religious person. In point of fact, I am very distrustful of religion. This has to do with many things, which I will address in a later post.

Having grown up in the United States, Christianity is a primary faith. Although broken into several religions, there is a basic doctrine that encapsulates them all. The most powerful for me is the concept of the “Daddy God”, that God is a father and cares for us as such. This is a very sharp transition from the Old Testament where God was more of the vengeance and authoritarian variety.

My belief is that something changed in God as a result of sending his son down to Earth. For God is powerful, all knowing, immortal, and indestructible. Through Jesus I believe that God learned what it means to be human, what it means to be mortal. For while God is able to do anything, being completely vulnerable and living a finite existence isn’t something he wants to do.

With God being a father, then human existence is his son. Like any child we have grown up. In the Old Testament days we were toddlers, being told what to do and being sharply disciplined when we did wrong. God was caring for us by using fear in him.

Jesus came at a time when we had gotten a little older as a society, and brought about change in our concepts of God. However we were still children, who were unable to completely grasp all the concepts.

Two thousand years later, and I think we progressed to the point of being teenagers. We know a lot more than we used to, and we think very highly of ourselves. We are still developing and questioning the world around us. Fear doesn’t work very well, neither does physical discipline. We have grown to the point where to be disciplined we need to be reasoned with.

Atheism doesn’t work for me. At the end of a very delicious meal or feeling a cool breeze on a hot summer day, I have to feel that something wonderful put these things in place. Something intelligent and with purpose. I also need an anchor to turn to when I need help or when things don’t make sense to me. For me, that is God.