We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

God is Not a Monster
God is not a monster. There are monster god theologies, but they are mistaken.
Accusation and scapegoating, the ravages of war and the wages of sin, these are monsters. The cruel vagaries of chance — until they are tamed by Christ in the age to come — may fall upon us as monsters. But God is not a monster. God is love. Jesus reveals this to us. If we move against the grain of love we will suffer the shards of self-inflicted suffering — and we can call this the wrath of God if we like — but the deeper truth remains: God is love.
So don’t sit in the dark with the tormenting idea that God somehow harbors malice and ill-will toward you. It’s all a cruel fiction. Turn on the light of Christ and realize that the monster you imagined does not exist. Who exists is Jesus. And he is the one who says to you, “It is I, be not afraid.”
You can find the whole post here.
Photo credit: ScottSimPhotography / Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Category: General
Tags: Attributes of God, Character of God, God is Love, Jesus
Related Reading

Participating in God’s Love
Greg took a slight detour from his reflections on free will in this video in order to talk about Jesus’ prayer in John 17. He discusses the idea that God desires the kind of unity among his children that the triune God enjoys. “He wants our love to participate in the triune God.” In order to…

Sermon: Letter to Henry
We usually share a short clip from Greg’s sermons here, but we decided that a clip just won’t do this week. This last weekend Greg preached about the life and death of Henry and what it does and does not say about God. You can listen to the sermon and download other resources over at…

What About Violence in the Parables? (podcast)
Greg examines the harsher parables. Episode 524 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0524.mp3

A Brief Theology of God’s Love
The most profound truth of the Bible is that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). This is the most fundamental thing to be said about God, for it encompasses everything else that can be said about God. Peter Kreft explains this passage it this way: Love is God’s essence. Nowhere else does Scripture express…

God’s Dream for the World
The future doesn’t yet exist—which is why it’s future instead of the present or past—this doesn’t mean I’m claiming the future is wide open. To the contrary, it’s very clear from Scripture that God has a great plan for the future, and this plan steers the course of history by setting limits on what can…

Love and Violence
What does it mean to confess that “God is love” and that we are called to “live in love” (Eph. 5:2)? One of the more common ways of understanding God’s love has its roots in the teachings of Augustine. He adamantly affirmed that the revelation that “God is love” lies at heart of the Gospel…