I think that one of my many problems when it comes to God is that I project the flaws of His purported messengers onto God. Typically the people that talk about God the most are the Pat Robertsons or the Joel Osteens. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Those are the people that the media feeds us talking about God the most. But the net result is the same. It is hard to separate the seriously flawed messengers from the object of the message.
Of course, these projections don’t come just from the extreme fringes spouting off on cable news shows. I find these voices in articles, on Facebook status updates, and in my own heart. And when I look at these projections, I don’t want God to be all-powerful. I don’t want a spiteful, surly, legalistic, fake, jingoistic, prideful God to be worshipped. It is hard for me to live with that God.
I have to make myself remember that that God is not God. Because if I let those that claim to follow Jesus - including myself - shade how I actually perceive Jesus himself, it’s over. I’ll end up trying to live a life adhering to some sort of ethical humanist philosophy. As tempting as that might be, I can’t do that. I still find myself drawn to this God that I don’t understand.
At the same time, it forces me to own up to the ways in which I might be projecting a dirty, flawed image of who God actually is. Because even though there are lots of questions that people raise about the concept of an almighty deity, it seems that the thing that gets in the way the most is those of us the follow God.