I've spent my entire life, more than less, in Christian circles. I've managed never to be brain-washed, though that's not to say I haven't heard things I'm sad to know are perceived and perpetuated as part of the belief system I claim as mine. That's beside the point. I've learned a lot about God and I'm constantly developing my sense of Him, and the more I learn the more I come to realize how much He is misunderstood, misrepresented, and misinterpreted.
The point that gets so often missed, and I missed until I was about 15, is that it's about relationship. God is not showing himself through Fox News (no matter what they or anyone tells you), not through Obama, not through celebrities who make award speeches about changing the world, not through funeral protests, not through suicide pacts, not through bible-thumping street preachers on ladders, and not through men in funny hats who make up new reasons that you are not enough. We get so lost in all the things people [we] make God, that we kill and bury the fact that He is about relationship. One could attempt to argue this, but one thing that I can assure can never be argued otherwise is that the bible is all about love. Love is a relationship.
I've known about God my whole life, I've known God for what I would say is going on seven years - though there is what I would refer to as evidence of Him in my entire life. And I still constantly forget that He is about love. I forget that He's good. I get sucked into the worldly portrayals of Him as a King Triton-esque man who sits on the clouds and strikes people with lightning that He's "done" with.
Christians tend to put their rules first, instead of the relationship. The bible calls them first to lending an ear or a hand, not pointing a finger - yet this is what the world sees, and it's not a figment of anyone's imagination.
Jesus spoke of the least of these; He taught about giving the most you possibly can. When He was in mourning, He still cared for others. When He brought correction He did so with gentleness and grace. He served as one of his last actions of freedom.
Upon having the slow-building realization that Jesus' life is almost nothing like what the church is known for amongst non-believers today, I wanted to know what I can tell people who've been hurt by the people who are meant to be emulating the life of Christ. People who shy from church, or the bible or the mention of God, because they've been force-fed some watered down, filtered version of the message of Christianity!
So I started asking myself, what does the bible say this whole thing is really about - what does Jesus teach with His life?
Though my growing up was thick with teachings on the bible, I'm still constantly learning from it. I am still turning it upside down, trying to figure out what does it really mean. Not pulling verses out of context and creating some picture of God that fits the image I've made Him into - but really reading, discussing, and internalizing the words.
See, the bible is the only concrete thing we can have as a common thread between Christians, and even then there's arguments over translation, synonyms, what have you. This is where enlightenment comes in. For the purpose here, enlightened meaning knowing God in a personal way, in which your spirit connects to His. Also referred to simply as interactions.
The only two things that I see as shaping my perception of God's character are reading and internalizing the word, and what I know of Him, from my life. Not what I know from what people tell me, or claim He's saying, or wants, or is doing, or will do! No. None of those, though as faith matures one may learn what is true of God that is being presented to them, and what is someone playing Him.
Because God is about love; about relationship, His interactions in our lives combined with the history of His character and the story of His Great Act of Love are the only possible picture we can have of God. He is not a painting of a bearded, white man with pretty blue eyes, or an old man, in a toga with a sceptor. He's not a judge in a black robe with a heavy, swinging gavel. He is not a protestor at a funeral or a wedding. He is not mother nature. He is not a dictator.
Many may not have anything other than a basic knowledge of the bible, but will likely have an immediate thought of God's interaction in their lives, so the question is begged: Who is God?
