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| Photo Credit: Brian A Jackson/ Shutterstock.com |
Talk to a hundred different believers about what God is like, and you'll get a hundred different answers.
Take,
as the most familiar example to most Westerners, Christianity. Ask one
Christian about what God is like, and she'll tell you of a strict,
punitive authority figure: a creator and enforcer of rules, with clear
ideas of right and wrong, a firm expectation that everybody should
follow them -- and harsh, intractable punishment for those who don't toe
the line.
Ask another
Christian, and you get a different picture entirely: a loving parent,
occasionally firm but mostly gentle and supportive, giving you lots of
latitude to find your own path, who only wants you to be happy and to be
your own best self.
Other
Christians -- notably deists and theistic evolutionists -- see God as a
sort of hands-off manager: initially founding the business of the
Universe, intervening now and then to make sure things run smoothly, but
mostly just sitting back and letting his creation run itself. And still
others see God as an impersonal abstraction, an intellectual ideal, the
encapsulation in metaphysical form of ideals such as love and morality.
Why do these images of God vary so much? READ MORE
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