An excerpt from one the best books I've read in a
while, "Divine or Distorted? God As We Understand God"
by Jerry Seiden. I think Anyone, no matter what you
believe about God or a Higher Power, could benefit
from reading this book. Here's an excerpt:

One day as I walked through my favorite park, I
recited the 12 Steps as was my custom. This day I
stopped at Step Three: "Made a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him." Something inside me asked, "How do
you understand God to be?" I responded by reciting all
the wonderful characteristics of God, but the voice
within me said, "No! That's what you've been told
about God in school and in books. Tell me what you
really believe God to be."
Just as if a dam broke in my heart and mind, I began
to cry, grit my teeth, and curse. I was angry. I
believed deep inside that God was unconcerned with my
life, unforgiving of my sin, impatient with my
weaknesses, intolerant of my failures, very angry with
me, and more. I believed I deserved all of God's wrath
and nothing of his grace. Nothing good could or should
happen to me. I wept until I was ashamed.
Then came silence followed by that voice in my heart
again. It was God's voice. It said, "You have
described yourself and the way you treat yourself. And
I am not like you. I am none of those things."
.
.
.
"You thought I was altogether like you!" These are
God's words, found in Psalm 50:21, when he spoke to
the injustice and delusion of the day. Think of it: a
God who is just like us. No thanks. That's backward.
We don't want a God who is like us. We want to be like
God.
An important distinction emerged between the God of
Israel and the gods of the ancient world. Few ancient
peoples wanted to be like their gods. Godliness was no
virtue. Remember how capricious, immature, and cruel
the Greek gods of Olympus were? Or what of the Roman's
gods? Worse yet, would anyone want to be like Molech,
the god of the Ammonites, who demanded that children
be sacrificed by fire? To be godly would be cruel,
unfeeling, and immoral. However, the opposite was true
in Israel. God was good. And he wanted his people to
be like him. He said again and again, "Be holy for I,
the Lord your God, am holy!" So in Psalm 50, God
points out a grave mistake: the assumption that God is
like us.
Sadly, we have not moved far from that mistaken
assumption. The very institutions--family, church, and
state--that ought to operate on and promote godly
principles, operate instead with the dysfunction of
our own perverted image of God. We grow up with the
image of God that we saw in our parents or in our
churches. And please understand, churches are not
exempt from dysfunction. We carry the dysfunction of
our personal lives and families into the pews,
pulpits, and board rooms of our worship centers.
Excerpted from Divine or Distorted? : God As We
Understand God by Jerry Seiden. Copyright © 1993.

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"No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his
love has been brought to full expression through us." 1 John 4:12

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