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Dwight Edwards relates the perceptions about God of such a person.
God’s demands of me were so high and His opinion of me was so low, there was no way for me to live except under His frown … All day long He nagged me: “Why don’t you pray more? Why don’t you witness more? When will you ever learn self-discipline? How can you allow yourself to indulge in such wicked thoughts? Do this. Don’t do that. Yield, confess, work harder.” God was always using His love against me. He’d show His nail-pierced hands, and then he would look glaringly and say “Well, why aren't you a better Christian? Get busy and live the way you ought to.”
Most of all, I had a God who down underneath considered me to be less than dirt. Oh, He made a great ado about loving me, but I believed that the day-to-day love and acceptance I longed for could only be mine if I let Him crush everything that was really me. When I came down to it, there was scarcely a word or a feeling or a thought or a decision of mine that God really liked.
Dwight Edwards - Revolution Within
For some God is like a terrible task master, always demanding more.
Do you labour under this projected perception of God?
I enjoy going to the movies. I sit for a couple of hours and look at a huge screen and a story unfolds it self to me. Up behind me is a projection box and light beams out from it casting the story onto the white screen.
Whatever is projected, I take into myself and becomes my reality for a short period of time. Whether I am being transported around the universe on Starship Enterprise, or walking fields with Hobbit's, I am totally absorbed in a projected view.
Whatever is projected, I take into myself and becomes my reality for a short period of time. Whether I am being transported around the universe on Starship Enterprise, or walking fields with Hobbit's, I am totally absorbed in a projected view.
Escapism from reality is ok, for a while, but eventually the movie comes to an end and I shuffle out of the theatre and back to living with bills to pay and dirty dishes to wash.
What projected view of God do you languish, labour, or love under?
It is vitally important to your Spiritual Formation to have a wide and holistic view of what God is really like and being open to change.
For some the movie of God is black and white, harsh and hard. There is little colour and life that would be considered attractive.
Perhaps a visit to a different movie might help?
People gathered around Jesus and he talked to them.
“Are you tired?
Worn out?
Burned out on religion?
Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Some quotes to consider
- Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, reduce the love story of God for his people to the observance of burdensome duties and oppressive laws. Brennan Manning A Glimpse of Jesus
- The Christian world, which incessantly projects its own god fashioned after its own image, pays a heavy price in anxiety, a scrupulosity that sees sin where there is no sin, and a vague sense of existential guilt. A Glimpse of Jesus
- I hope it is clear that feelings of guilt, accompanied by anxiety, fear and restlessness, arise from deep within ourselves and are not an accurate gauge of the state of our souls before God. We cannot assume that he feels about us the way we feel about ourselves, unless we love ourselves intensely and freely. Bernard Bush
- What projections of God have you laboured under?
- What picture of God does Jesus reveal in Matthew 11:28-30
- How does someone change the projected view of God that they have adopted as reality?
Barry Pearman
