God doesn’t change. He is a constant. However human understanding of God does change. People will also frequently erroneously claim things about God that are no more than human inventions and have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of God. In the Great War both Britain and Germany claimed God was on their side. An obvious nonsense as war is abhorrent. Women have been burned at the stake for witchcraft because that was what God wanted. Another obvious nonsense. God gets the blame for a lot of actions or the absence of actions where people think he should have acted like some inflated super human being. Because people claim or blame things on God doesn’t mean they are true or even close to anything that relates to the Divine.
If you take a tour of Protestant churches in the present world situation, you will hear people claim God hates homosexuals and also God loves homosexuals and they should marry. You will hear preachers proclaim everyone is going to heaven others that most people are gong to hell. These are projections of human views and attitudes on to the concept of a deity that bears no relation to reality. It is in a very real sense a form of idolatry where God has been created to reflect the prejudices and opinions of an individual or a group of individuals. If you read the Gospels you will easily see the frequency with which Jesus challenges and causes trouble by pointing out How far from the real truth about God people are, even when they think of themselves as deeply religious and rigorous followers of customs and laws. These people weren’t in some way backward or ignorant they are exactly like us. They were no different in anyway and all their faults are still found today in every human and every institution.
In seeking with an open and honest heart union with the divine we must be aware of the danger of making a God in our own or others image. We have to be careful to keep our faith separate from the country and culture in which we find ourselves as none comes close to God. Beware also in politics of thinking that your political persuasion has anything to do with God or that God and democracy walk hand in hand.
It is an eye-popping, watering experience when we learn to see God as He is or that is, as far as it is humanly possible to see God while we remain bound by the constraints of our failing human bodies. We will never catch more than a brief glimpse of God in this life but even that glimpse, that momentary experience will shake you to the core and last you a lifetime.
There are some questions I suppose you can keep in reserve to ask yourself. The primary one is of course about Love. Is there true pure love in this concept? Is it really love or is it human love projected onto the idea or situation. The hippies talked about love. But the love they professed as ALL was a dictatorship that required love to be accepted on their terms and you were either with them on or not, and of course love got confused with sex and an anything goes attitude that was little more than selfish self indulgence. It was without a solid foundation which is why it blossomed and fell away just as rapidly as it appeared.
The truth is out there to be found, just keep following the straight and narrow path of discipleship. Follow Jesus into the very heart of God.
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