Myths About God

The longer I'm a Christian, the less I know about Christianity.  Somehow, I never imagined that that would be the case; I pictured myself years from my conversion looking back at the naive girl I once was and then around me at my current, holy, relevant life.  And smiling a current, holy, relevant smile, trotting off into the future to learn more stuff about God.  Except that that is not how it happened.  I became a Christian, learned a smidgin of what I needed to know to function in my new world and filled the rest of the space in my head with the old stuff I already thought I knew from before.  Which is how you end up with cults, ladies and gentlemen.

Fortunately, a few things saved me from A) making a total fool of myself and B) being really, really wrong.  One of the big ones was David, another was the internet, surprisingly, which is where I first discovered other Christians blogging about their lives.  A third was church, but not all church.  Some churches were very good and some were not so good.  And the fourth was the Holy Spirit.

I feel bad for the Holy Spirit in my life, man has he got his work cut out for him.  I fight and kick and scream the whole way to enlightenment.  And I don't take hints, and I freak out at everything, and I'm generally, well, a neurotic, anxiety-ridden bookworm who is, by the grace of God alone, just making it work!  How DOES he manage?  Well, he does, on occasion, bring things I thought I knew already up to the surface so that I can re-examine them.  And recently one of those things has been How I See God.

If you ask me how I see God, I would tell you something along the lines of: "God is an infinite being of three persons.  He exists outside of time and space as we know it and interacts with us in every possible way.  In the person of His Son he is our salvation, and in the person of the Father, He is a loving figure who guides and teaches His children through the sending of the Holy Spirit and through His word."

And although I'm not a theologian, and I've missed a few points, that's pretty accurate right there.  But then I live as though THIS definition is what I'd given:  "God is an infinite Santa Claus like figure who knows if you've been bad or good.  He exists outside of time and space but he watches you all the time.  Even if you confess your sins and are forgiven for them, he's put them somewhere, like in a little book he carries around with Him.  In the person of His Son He is our salvation, but that only applies when you're dead, 'cause salvation doesn't help you at all if you're alive.  He's a loving figure who is a strict disciplinarian and will let you fall again and again, tearing apart everything you love in order to 'teach you a lesson'.  You'd better listen.  Oh, and He can't help you.  Even if you pray really hard.  You're on your own."

It isn't true.  I would never say that was true, but I feel more and more as though that's how I'm living.  As though that was truly the definition of God!