Summary

The author argues that our understanding of God has evolved, and we need to upgrade our ideas about God as primarily a loving entity rather than a harsh, judgmental one.

Abstract

The author argues that the way we understand God is limited by our own perceptions and intellect. Throughout history, our understanding of God has evolved, with older ideas being crude and harsh. The author suggests that we need to refresh and expand our ideas about God, while retaining the truth at their core. The author highlights that God is primarily love, and this is reflected in the teachings of great spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Buddha, and Lao Tse. The author suggests that we should throw away the idea of God as judge, punisher, and wrathful avenger, and instead embrace the idea of God as love.

Opinions

The author believes that God is primarily love, as evidenced by the teachings of great spiritual leaders throughout history.
The author suggests that our understanding of God has evolved throughout history, with older ideas being crude and harsh.
The author argues that we need to refresh and expand our ideas about God, while retaining the truth at their core.
The author believes that we should throw away the idea of God as judge, punisher, and wrathful avenger, and instead embrace the idea of God as love.

Why We Need to Update Our Ideas About God

The challenge is to better articulate our evolving understanding while retaining the essence of truth

“Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.” — The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

If you’ve ever read old history books, you’ll notice that the writing reveals more about what the author thinks than what actually happened. Writings about the character of God are similar.

The limits and attitudes of the authors are revealed more than what God is actually like. Most often, the authors see God through the lens of their own limited perceptions.

To be fair though, anyone writing about God faces a dilemma. Namely, God is broader, deeper, more complex, and more full of meaning than any single human intellect can comprehend, more than any generation of intellects can comprehend or even, more than all generations put together (so far).

In our lives on Earth, we’re forever bound to understand God only partially.

Olden ideas come from olden thinking

The further back in history you look, the cruder the ideas about God become. Some of the earliest Christian conceptions of God found in the Old Testament are quite stern. God is a judge, forever waiting to catch his people in some act of wrongdoing and mete out consequences fitting to the misdeed.

These ideas made sense for the people who thought them up, but life back then was also unbelievably difficult and unforgiving. Child mortality in ancient Egypt approached 50%. Diseases we don’t even think about anymore, like smallpox, were deadly. Pain killers, band-aids, and electricity didn’t even exist. Who but a harsh god could have created such a place?

These concepts may have worked for their time and place, but eventually, our collective understanding of ourselves and the world changed so much that we outgrew the usefulness of these conceptions. They just don’t fit anymore.

We need to refresh them, expand them, and account for the thousands of years of scientific, philosophic, and spiritual advances humanity has accomplished while still retaining the very real truth at their core.

To quote one of Jordan Peterson’s favorite metaphors, we need to replace our “low resolution” picture with a “high resolution” one.

Not an easy task.

Rethinking the character of God

To begin, let’s upgrade the idea of a harsh, judgmental God.

A higher resolution picture of God reveals he is primarily love, on an infinite level. How do we know this?

Because all of the great spiritual leaders in history, the ones who honestly and sincerely aimed to live by spiritual principles, eventually aligned their lives and teachings with the true north of love.

Jesus is the one that foremost springs to mind, but the truth of love surfaces powerfully in so others: Buddha, Lao Tse, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and many more.

The principal trait of God, the one dominating all other attributes, is divine love. This is love that looks outward and seeks to give and serve first. It tries to send love out to others, knowing that in time that love will come back around again.

When you develop an internal relationship with God — however you understand God, in whatever terms you use, in whatever concepts work for you — in time your mindset, your values, your behavior become more and more dominated by love.

Jesus in particular was able to present an elevated expression and understanding of this kind of divine love because he achieved three things.

First, he developed an unshakeable internal relationship with God. This enabled him to show God how good humanity could become by embracing and consistently living the principles of the spirit.

Second, by living his life consistently guided by love, by discussing what he discovered of divine love, and by engaging privately in human acts of service, he showed humanity how good God could be.

Third, through his unfailing example of adhering to the values of the spirit — love, patience, forbearance, tolerance, tact, honesty, sincerity, and others — even in the most unjust, unimaginable and impossible of human circumstances, he showed humanity how good we could actually be.

So what does this mean for you?

It means this: throw away your idea of God as judge, God as punisher, God as wrathful avenger. Those ideas saw people through some other age, one radically different from our own.

That was then, this is now.

God is many things, but first, before anything else, God is guided by love.

Nothing in God’s character is secondary to this.

God looks at you through the lens of love. Always has, always will.

Therefore settle in your philosophy now and forever: To each of you and to all of us, God is approachable, the Father is attainable, the way is open . . . — The Urantia Book, 5:1.8 (63.6)