I think that much of many people’s problem with God is that they’re expecting God to be what someone told them God would be. God turns you into a bird, so you can fly far, far away. God picks you up, kisses your owie, and gives you a band-aid with Batman on it. This is the way that most Christians try to represent God: “God fixes all your crap.” You pray, God responds… it all balances out. If God doesn’t send you the Playstation that you asked for for Christmas, well, you get one in Heaven and that’s why.
This is why I loathe modern Christian writers (for the most part): because they freaking sell God to us, like it says somewhere that God is going to save us all from bullies in school and make everything sunshine and cupcakes. Then come the apologetics (because none of us are rolling in sunshine and cupcakes): “You see,” says the Christian Marketing Department, “the bullies burn in a pit of fire and you get an eternity of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in Heaven. It all works out.”
The majority of Christian Churches are enormously damaging in many respects. Faith is a beautiful thing, but I don’t think that God should be expected to deal with anyone’s problems (nor do I think that God is responsible for anyone’s problems). The Bible is full of largely contradicting visions of God. Read Genesis and Joshua and John and Acts and Ecclesiastes and you’ll have a million different ideas and wonder why that stuff’s all in the same book. Humankind has endlessly been struggling to understand God, so for some Christians to be arrogant enough to sell God as if they can predict that God will save Joe Everyman’s family from poverty by magically assigning him a new job after his baptism is the most blasphemous BS to ever fly out of anyone’s mouth.
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