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.

monster god

God is Not a Monster

Pastor Brian Zhand has a way with words that captures the imagination. And he is a pastor that has taken time to read the church fathers. In a recent post, he quotes Saint Antony who wrote, “I no longer fear God, but I love him. For love casts out fear.” Brian confronts the common misconceptions and images of God that depict him as “mercurial and merciless, petty and vengeful.” He writes,

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

Related Reading

Reflections on the Supremacy of Christ (Part 2)

Whereas most Christians place the revelation of God in Christ alongside of other portraits of God and end up with an amalgamated image of God, we at ReKnew encourage believers to base their understanding of God completely on Christ, and especially on Christ crucified. And we encourage disciples to work to reinterpret through the lens…

Sermon Clip: Keeping Christmas

Through Christ, God fulfills all his promises, and by yielding to him and giving up control, we can set ourselves free.   Full Sermon here: http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/keeping-christmas

What Happened on the Cross?

Since the time of Anselm (11th century), and especially since the Reformation in the 16th century, the tendency of the Western church has been to focus almost all of its attention on the anthropological dimension of the atonement, usually to the neglect of the cosmic dimension that is central to the NT. In the standard…

Are You Guilty of Marcionism?

Greg responds to the question of whether or not his cruciform hermeneutic is anything like the heresy of Marcion, who basically advocated throwing out the Old Testament. (Spoiler: it’s not.)

Lies, Truth, and the Holy Spirit

The root of the flesh is a lie about who God is and who we are. Satan brings us into bondage of the flesh by convincing us that God is not the loving God he says that he is. In doing this, Satan convinces us that we cannot find fullness of life by being wholly…

Love and the Other Attributes of God

If we keep our focus on Christ, we see that God’s power and God’s love are not two separate attributes, as many people assume. As I often state, love is not merely something God does; love is what God eternally is. Everything God does, therefore, expresses perfect love. God’s power, therefore, is simply an aspect…

Topics: