Images of God and their consequences

What is your image of God? If you are a cow, then God must be a divine cow. If you are an elephant, then God is for sure a divine elephant. If you are from Africa, then God must look like an African. If you are from India, then God looks like an Indian. And so on.

If you are a person who loves power, then God must be powerful. If you are a person of humor, enjoying life, then God must be very funny and offering all the joy. If you are a man of knowledge and science, then God must be a divine scientist. And so on.

If you have a bad character, then God must be worse than you. If you are evil, then God must be the darkness itself. If you love money, then your God is Mammon. If you are a warrior, then your God is the divine warrior, the god of war.

In conclusion, your personal idea of God corresponds with your personality, your values and your nature. Here the point is that God itself is a reality and your idea or image of God is another thing or reality. It is an attribute which you attach to the Divine Spirit like putting cloths on. So there are often big differences between the real God, the highest divine being and the ideas or images of God which are developed by people over time. All these ideas or images are a matter of the own personality, the own values and philosophy and certainly also of the specific time and culture. So we perceive God through our individual filter of perception.

When you study the different religions and their ideas of God, then you come to interesting results. India is the richest culture regarding the number of gods, goddesses and images of the Divine. There ideas are esoteric and corresponding to the reality beyond human filters of perception. In contrary to the East, we lack in the West of this diversity of divine aspects expressed in a diversity of images, gods and goddesses. In the Western World there remained only one God (with countless “Angels”). Depending on the religion and the part of “holy teachings” you look at, this one God is presented as the “Loving, merciful God”, “The Evil itself” and the “human-like God”. All these images do not fit to each other. In the old teachings of the latest religions, God has in main the bad image of the human-like, evil, jealous tyrant who is permanently challenging his followers instead of taking loving care of them (like one could imagine). Furthermore this tyrant proclaims that even as he is the one creator of everything, all people have no more value than cattle as only “his” personal followers are “good”. And his followers are meant to exploit all other people and creation. This is truly a “wonderful” heart-warming image of the one God. In fact a more evil, more inhuman idea of people and creation cannot be imagined. Such ideas origins of the evil, selfish nature of those who have created the evil image of God.

From the idea of God which you worship, you can derive your character.

And certainly, it is truly amazing that the “holy teachings” consist of controversial images of God which do not fit in any way to each other. It is the lacking of logic.  God cannot be merciful, peaceful, full of love for all beings and at the same time a selfish, misbehaving destructive being. God cannot be absolute, all-embracing, all-knowing and at the same time limited to a few followers, limited in knowledge and understanding, limited to a small place, etc. These ideas simply do not work out.

When we check now history, then we see that there were always individuals who understood these differences and who worked for the right and absolute understanding of God beyond the (evil) images and ideas or destructive people. Jesus was one of the most known protagonists. He taught to leave the evil image of God behind and to follow a new lawful idea of the loving Father who forgives, who heals, who is merciful, etc. Unfortunately, Jesus teachings were sacrificed and perverted for the sake of the old image of God. Due to this, Christians focus on sacrifices, suffering, death and more evil instead of celebrating the bearer and preacher of light and love and righteousness.

In fact, obviously in the Western religions there are more evil worshippers in power, dominating the masses of followers who do not question anything but enjoying dark behavior, than any positive worshippers of the principle of light.

In conclusion, especially in the West, we still see the old and evil image of God at work, dominating everything in life. As long as the people worldwide do not understand these origins of all the problems and suffering we face today, we cannot make the conscious shift towards the principle of light, love and wisdom.

Think about it. Ask yourself, which image of God you have and question it regarding your filter of perception, your nature, your personal values in life, your religion and your habits.

And at last, ask yourself how God probably “looks like” without any personal filters, what the real nature of the absolute and highest God is?