Coffeehouse: What are the dangers of having an inaccurate view of God?

I think a very common thing is that we "put God in a box" and effectively limit what we think the possibilities are through Him. He is sovereign and is ultimately going to accomplish His will. But if we don't think something's possible, we could miss out on being part of the action.

Let's face it...bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. If we have a limited view of God we could get stuck on our natural reaction of "that's not fair." If you have a view of God as a star-breathing Creator of the universe...personally, I can take at least some comfort in knowing that while it sucks going through it right now, but ultimately I will be where He wants me.

One of my favorite things in the Bible is in Genesis 50 when Joseph looks back at his life and realizes that God works amazingly and accomplishes His will - even through the evil intentions of his brothers.

THAT's an awesome God!

I hear so many people say stuff like my god is a loving god he would never send someone to Hell. Maybe your god wouldn't send someone to Hell BUT the true God of the Bible is a loving God but He is also perfect and just and will still punish you for your sins. When people do stuff like this they are creating a god in their own image and not excepting the true God

I see two main dangers in this.

For Christians, this results in the inability to please God, fulfill His ordained roles, and the loss of Christian joy.

For non-believers, it drives them away from salvation by grace and into secularism, paganism, or works-based spiritual rewards.

In my martial arts, my most recent sensei always pointed out that the only thing worse than a bad instructor is his students.

I think one of the biggest dangers of having an inaccurate view of God is passing that on to the next generation.

Take a printed document. Make a photocopy of it. Now photocopy the photocopy; now photocopy the copy of the copy the original. And keep making copies of each copy before it. Eventually the image will become distored and have more errors in it with each generation to the point that you won't be able to tell what the original document was. (Okay, possibly slightly inaccurate with today's tech, but this was a problem in first gen copy machines).

The same thing can happen with an inaccurate view of God. Getting passed on to each generation unchecked and uncorrected will introduce more and more inaccuracies to the point that God is no longer a recognizable God.

Just my $.02 worth.