Welcome to Gaia! ::

You read the title right. This is not a condemnation of any one or any group but merely a reflection. How do we make God in our image? What attributes do we give to God that creates the personal god/s we worship? Is there any advantage to doing this? If we do this, how do we recognize when we do this and how do we change this behavior? Why should we overcome this behavior?

People with their weak minds needing something to identify with.

I consciously try to remove these assumptions from my perception of God. In its place, I do feel as if he is something alien and weird, beyond understanding. I am unsure if this is a truth, or yet another misunderstanding.

Perhaps in some way, my value of the strange and unsettling is focusing my attention on a piece of a whole. Perhaps just as there are great winding mysteries, there are simplicities and familiarities to him. Perhaps not, perhaps I am simply wrong. Maybe he is simple, but we don't want to see it. Maybe I don't.

It is hard to remove bias from our perception of others. I think the important thing is not that we must be right in this regard, but that we must be honest.

There are so many ways that I don't think we could even recognize them. We name God... we give God man-made title... we give God gender... we try to put a face to God... We describe God in ways that equate divine action with human emotion... Every time we have a discussion about God we try to reduce God into pieces that fit into our finite understanding. Humanity is always trying to reduce God in one breath, and flatter God in the next.

We try to explain God's actions with emotions that we might feel in a person to person situation. We describe God as a loving parent in one breath, and in the next, God can become a jealous lover. Some people consider God a caring creator, and turn around to describe God as a child who tired of a home made toy...

I don't think that there is an advantage. I think the boxing of God into limited human perceptions is exactly why so many people seem to get along.

I have been pondering this one awhile. I know I have been guilty of reducing and compartmentalizing God. I just try to recognize that I don't have the authority to tell others that my understanding of God is superior to theirs. Instead, I try to learn from others' understanding of God.

I think that we can reduce a lot of prejudice and anger if people would just realize that they aren't so different, and that God is so much more than they can read in a man-written book or fit in your puny human brain.