How do you perceive God?
Discussion question for November 5, 2010 – No Meeting on October 29
We talked about how God likes us, and cares for us. What do you see when you consider the character of God? What has influenced your perspective? In what ways have you accepted things as true based on your culture? What role does your family of origin play? What spiritual leaders do you follow, and how do you select them?
Here’s my summary of our discussion.
God commanded that we make no physical representations of Him. If we did, it would lead to idolatry and it would fix in our mind an idea of God that is too constraining. He can not be captured as a single character trait because He is a God of increase.
We get ideas about God’s nature by making assumptions based on our experience. Family of origin issues have a huge impact, and often untested. When you grow up believing that people can’t love you, or that they only love you if you follow through on what they want, or that they leave you in the lurch whenever something bad happens – then those same things are assigned to God when you think about how He loves you.
Our culture impacts our understanding because it forms a grid through which we process everything. In a western culture, basically Judeo-Christian, we hear and learn things about God that are interpreted from the Bible. One of the challenges comes when the interpretation is flawed. Churches and religious leaders can easily fall into the trap of short-changing God. It happens because they teach about God through their own flawed perception. Also, it is easier to explain a simple God. At times, the concept of God has been used for behavior control, which amounts to spiritual abuse.
We are created in God’s image and likeness. That means there are parts of His character that really resonate with us. We are comfortable with the parts of His nature that we are familiar with, through understanding ourselves.
Ideas and beliefs about God must be interrogated and compared with Truth. There are two reliable sources for this Truth: the Bible and God Himself.
Jude 20 says that we should always pray in the Spirit. We should expand our knowledge about God through reading the Bible and studying everything it reveals about the nature and character of God. We should also pray (in the Spirit), asking God to reveal Himself to us. In this way we will hear Truth from the Source, and we will recognize it as true by what He has already said about Himself through the Scriptures.