Our conception of God needs to be revised if it does not lead us to emphasize the virtues of compassion, peacefulness, justice, mercy and love in God and in ourselves.

We profane God and dehumanize ourselves when we allow ourselves to believe in a god that is war-mongering, vindictive, judgmental, retributive, capricious, jealous, sexist, homophobic, racist, fascist, dictatorial, or discriminatory.

To portray God as having characteristics that would be vile for any human being to have would be sacrilegious given that God should be the epitome of of our noblest, not basest, values. It is egregious to call divine that which we’d criticize in our enemies. It is shameful to justify our own hatreds and fears of others as sanctioned by God.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees another in need and yet refuses to help…? For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (I John 4.16b, 3.17, 3.11).

— Rev. Bret S. Myers, 8/12/2017