“God is whatever you think God is.” Top 7 Lies I’ve heard about God, part 1

There are few things in the world that everyone thinks they are experts on, but God and spiritual things is certainly one of them. Everyone, regardless of whether or not they can define the term ‘theology,’ thinks they are an expert on the matter and know better than anyone who has studied it academically for a decade.

So I’ve been thinking through several of the things I’ve heard people casually say, often without much thought, about the divine, and share my own two cents about the matter.

1. God is whatever you think God is.

I mean, the people who say this don’t even believe it. The classic example is, Hitler had some conception of what God is, and none of us would say that it was accurate or even permissible. We don’t want that God, because it’s a bad version of God.

Well, who defines what type of God is good or bad? Humans? If so, they have to acknowledge that they have a version of God which they believe is better than someone else’s, even if that person is Hitler.

In fact, they can’t even define right and wrong without appealing to some sort of universal higher authority on these matters (this is called deontological ethics; ethics that come from an authority higher than humans).

Like, who says that bodily autonomy is a universal good? Who says that all people are made equal? Surely we don’t all serve and contribute equally to society… That’s a dangerous path to go down.

You cannot just blanketly state that all spiritual beliefs are equal, because this is simply not true — even those who say it don’t believe it. They mean all statements about God which they approve of are true. Some religious beliefs lead to violence and genocide; others to selflessness and loving sacrifice. Therefore, the ideas embedded in these various spiritual belief systems must not be alike or equal. Each requires its own investigation and analysis.

This means that some ideas about God are more right and others are more wrong. The question is, how does one go about finding out which ideas are which? Because if some are more true, shouldn’t we strive to find out which beliefs are most true?

(You’ll notice I haven’t argued for one particular religion over another; I’m simply pointing out that the statement itself is empirically false. That someone making the statement needs to conduct some further investigation into the varying religious beliefs and find that indeed, not all theologies are created equally.)

Even the statement that all beliefs are right is a truth statement. One who says this is supposing it to be true before moving on. Someone who says they are wrong about this (i.e., me), inherently disproves their point. Christianity, for example, says that ‘If we are true, then many other religions are false, and vice-versa.’ There is no way that all these systems competing to be True (with a capital T) can all be right. Some must be less true than the others, and some more.

But one thing we can conclude: They cannot all be right.

So, no, God is not whatever you think God is. You can think false things about God — we all have, many times a day.

I believe that when I think of God as angry and disappointed in me, I’m believing a lie about God. I should adjust my thinking about God if I’m holding onto something that is false about Him, and it’s hurting me and others.

Or if I were to believe “God doesn’t care about me anymore,” I would be saying something about God that’s false.

On the flip side, we are able to say things about God that are true:
God is good, even when we can’t see the goodness.
God hates disunity and death.
God created everything.

A big chunk of theology is figuring out which statements about God are true and which are not. It may sound simple from the above examples, but once you get down into the nitty-gritty, it’s anything but.

Stay tuned for Number 2!

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