How Do You Imagine God?

As I was looking through the USA Weekend insert in the Sunday paper a few weeks ago, I noticed the religion column was entitled, “How do you imagine God?” Intrigued, I read on. Here are some quotes from the article:

Each of us has a unique vision of God—or Allah or Vishnu or HaShem.

Here in the USA, believers are creating yet a “new kind of story” when it comes to how people see God, says religion professor Stephen Prothero in the new PBS-WGBH TV special God In America, a three-part series that starts Monday. [Read Mark Looy’s article on this series.]

Now, USA WEEKEND, together with PBS, wants to learn your image of God's personality and behavior. Research shows this tells more about your worldview—whom you love, how you vote, your response to a crisis—than any social label.

It’s very true that our worldview or presuppositions (basic beliefs about reality) determine the things they mentioned and many, many more—which is why it is so important that we don’t imagine God! It is not for us to decide who God is, but rather to trust the authoritative Word of God to tell us who God is.

Unfortunately, many in our society would rather try an à la carte approach to religion where they take a little of this and a little of that from many different religions, and whatever works for them or makes them happy is what they call “religion.” The problem is that this places man’s authority above God’s.

Read some of these comments from people in response to the article. You will see very clearly how they are placing their authority above God and creating God in their own image.

I'm a Wiccan priestess, and I honor the Goddess—all that is eternal and generative—and the God—all that dies and is reborn. I don't have to imagine them: the cycle of life is real and part of everyone's every day life. . . . I see the God/dess in everything and everyone. Nature is the source and object of holiness, and we're all part of it.

When I think of God I imagine infinite loving positive energy. There is a bit of loving and positve energy in every human being. Some have more, some have less, but we all have it. We can nurture it or ignore it. I think God is a culmination of all that loving positive energy in every human being.

Just as the atom is the building block of all things, I think of God as so omnipresent that He is microscopic. Not in the sense that God is small but rather so all encompassing that God is like the cell of every particle of every living thing.

I started to study (on my own) about this being who had so much control over peoples minds and lives. I discovered that ALL gods were created by humans to explain what they couldn't understand and how certain people in power realized that they could use the image of a "supreme being" to control people, populations, empires, countries. Today as an adult woman free of the superstition of religion and [its] god(s). I imagine humans working together using reason and critical thinking to save humanity and our earth.

This was my favorite comment:

You ask how do I imagine God? I don't need to "imagine" God. He is clearly known by reading His Word, the Bible. It tells me exactly what He is like and how I can know Him. Isaiah 45:18 says, "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God who formed the earth and made it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited; I am the LORD and there is no other." If you want to know God get and read a Bible. So why imagine when you can really know Him and have a relationship with Him?

AMEN! At AiG and the Creation Museum, we want to call Christians and the church back to the authority and truthfulness of God’s Word. Get equipped and be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15).