What does your God look like?

This came in from Dr. Symeon Rodgers and I realized I couldn't have said it better --he so echoes my opinion on this matter. Here he is, then:

Do you ever find yourself with a dialog in your head about how God will punish you if you do X? Whenever you do, just read this passage, attributed to the Egyptian monk, St. Anthony the Great in the 4th century. It will set you straight: "God is good, dispassionate and unchanging. ...God neither rejoices nor grows angry, nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him. He is good and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We human beings, on the other hand, if we work to retain our resem-blance to God, we are united to Him. But if we fall into evil, we are separated from Him. It is not that He grows angry with us in some arbitrary way, but it is our own evil that prevents God from shining within us and exposes us to the demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of mercy [including not judging!] we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and changed His mind, but that through our actions and by turning toward God we have cured ourselves so that we once again enjoy God's good-ness. To say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind."

Good stuff to ponder over...

Kiki ;-)
P.S. My request to those who 'borrow' from this blog is to please give adequate credit to the source of the borrowed information - whether me, or books and people I quote from. Thank you.