I wish to begin with two quotes the first by A.W. Tozer and the second by C.S. Lewis:
A. W. Tozer: What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God. [emphasis mine]
—A.W. Tozer,
The Knowledge of the Holy(New York: HarperCollins, 1978), 1.
C. S Lewis: I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
—C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory” (1941)
I think Tozer is closer to the fact of the matter; what we think about God will determine what we think God thinks about us. The first is easier to determine because it is more easily discernible, the later is a matter of revelation and our interpretation of the revealed which the history of Religions has shown unequivocally that revealed descriptions of God are always interpreted subjectively and thus many times the same message can be used destructively or as a blessing.
The negative attributes below all arise because we have been taught that God thinks negatively of the human race—original sin doctrine—and has the ability to condemn some and raise others to glory. Also Tozer’s insight that: “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” is proven over and over again in religious history by the violence perpetrated by certain spheres of believers. When we follow after the image as if entrained by a vengeful and abusive parent we go into the world not to bless but to punish, in Gods name, all that disagree with us. We believe we are doing “God’s work.”
On the other side if we are of the opinion that God loves us and cares for us, does not judge or condemn us, but is longsuffering towards all His creations, if God sees the human race as originally created in blessing and goodness—in the image and likeness—if the human race somehow became blind and ignorant in need of healing and forgiveness not condemnation, then we will, as Tozer points out, spiritually move in that direction and as a consequence treat or fellow companions in a benign manner.
With that in mind, I do not think God is:
Vengeful, cruel, or punishes anyone for any reason: God has no ego. It’s been said God created us in His/Her image, then we returned the favor and created God in our image. Under the influence of “good and evil” after the great deception (the fall) we decided “…in His image…” means because we are: vengeful, cruel and wish to punish all those who act contrary to how we think they should believe and act are in need of punishment, God becomes a punisher, we then become his agents for doing so.
Part 2 in a short while.
God is Good 