Living out our image of God

Here is a great article by Colin Lagerwall on how our image of God causes us to live indifferently towards others.

"Some thoughts on our 'beliefs' and how they affect us, negatively or positively, and how the notion of wanting to be 'more like God' is a trap to our souls ...

If the objective of 'belief' is to change ourselves, then we have been poorly made, and then God Himself, who made us like Him, is 'poorly' ....

I think that the main objective of belief, or the Gospel, is to have our thoughts reconstructed from a dismal or skewed view of ourselves, which has been very much ingrained in us by society and in particular, typical religions of most kinds, and to see what we have lost sight of, and that being our beautiful original 'person' that we have always been, 'covered under' by society's flawed value systems ...

'More of You and less of me' is as dumb as it comes and stems from self-loathing promoted by sin-consciousness, however :

'More of You so I can see more of Me' is about as good as it gets ...

Jesus speaks of this in John 17:22-23 where he says :
"The opinion the Father has of me, is also His thoughts of you, and the love He has for me, is no different to the love He has for you; You are honored without measure for just who you are, and you are loved the most and always will be"

Paul also refers to this when he says 'Take off that wrong (old) way of seeing yourself, and put on (fall into) the new (yet original) mindset, because that is who you really are, that 'old man' is what society and religion has put on you, and it is dung (BS) ...

The Spirit of love and truth shows us our Father as He is, so that we can see that we really are 'a chip off the old block', as is everyone else ..

It then becomes a tad easier to love another as you love yourself, because you see 'another' as a beautiful member of your own family, regardless of what society and religion has ingrained in them, because 'us and them' belongs to the false values of society and religions, but 'We' belong to 'Our' Father and each other ....

The thing with knowing we are made in His likeness, is, just 'what does that look like?'

We have been given such an horrendous image of God via religion, that it either repels us from 'him' because it is an insult to our own souls knowing that we are just not like 'that', or it gives people license to be just like that image (see typical church leadership, leaders of governments, fathers, teachers, etc. operating n the image of 'god' we have presented by the church and other religions) ...

In Jesus, we see God, lover of the outcasts and pulling down the high and mighty; very touchable, lovable, admirable, always pointing to a better way, the way of truth and love ...

Our doctrines are full of the dung that Paul spoke of, and it has tainted and poisoned humanity just like a 'turd in the drinking water' would ... 
But I think things are changing as we are re-evaluating just what this 'image and likeness' looks like, and it certainly challenges to the core those settled on their thrones like the 'god' in their minds ....

God is Love, said John, and Paul opens that up to show what Love is really like : peaceful, gentle, holding no record of wrong, etc ...

When we see people reacting negatively to 'grace', or 'hyper-grace', we are seeing their reactions to the challenge of the 'image' in their minds, the image that they have become very comfortable with, but an image that is based on a lie ...

'Truth and Love' is the currency of God that wipes out any false 'god' in our minds, because He is full of Grace (Love) and Truth, it is who He is, and how He sees us is how we are really are : full of Love and Truth, just like Him ....

The other mythical 'god' that instills fear and manipulation and control is the very thing that keeps humanity living falsely to who we really are, and this false image is what continually perpetuates self-loathing because we live according to the image we see in him/ourselves, and we hate it, so we hate ourselves ....

Until the sunshine of Love and Truth penetrates our self-hatred and we 'see' what He has always seen, a child of love, just like Him ..."



Peace