Childhood Image of God Prevails Among Adults, Authors Say

When asked his identity, God answered cryptically in Scripture, “I Am Who I Am.” Religious thinkers say God is beyond human definitions or comprehension, but that many people tend to shrink him down to handy, manageable size.

Such notions generally are carried over from Sunday school images from childhood, never subjected to mature examination, says Rabbi Jack Bemporad, a leader in Jewish-Christian dialogue.

“In many ways, we have grown smarter, but when it comes to God, many of us haven’t grown at all,” Bemporad and advertising executive Michael Shevack write, saying that many haven’t developed views matching adult knowledge.

“We still have stupid ways of thinking about God,” they say. “The ideas we were spoon-fed as children we now gag on as adults,” undermining and destroying belief in many cases.

In an often humorous but perceptive book, “Stupid Ways, Smart Ways, to Think about God,” published by Triumph Books, the authors describe both the frequently silly but also sensible views of God.

To a large extent, atheists seldom reject a credible God but usually “reject some stupid way of thinking about God,” the authors say, calling some ideas about God “so ridiculous they are not worth believing.”

Although God can’t be reduced to human analysis, the authors say there are “smart ways to think of God” that expand and change with time and that “also expand and change us.”

Bemporad, of Englewood, N.J., is director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. Shevack, of Bucks County, Pa., has written numerous articles on religion.

Among the “stupid” views of God listed in their 117-page book:

* God as your personal “cosmic bellhop,” ratifying “your every desire,” always “ready to serve you” to control others, making in essence “yourself god.”

* God as “little Mary Sunshine,” so don’t worry, “little Mary Sunshine will take care of everything for you.”

* The “proverbial God of wrath, ready to show how much he cares by punishing you, the Marquis de God,” despising sinners so much he exterminates them. Adherents of this view blame God’s vindictiveness, rather than “our own moral lapses.”

* “God the general,” a “nationalistic god” whose “holy mission is to serve his country. Protect its honor.” He’s not just defender, but a “self-righteous and meddlesome god. . . . He is the commander of crusades. The leader of jihads.”

* “God the master of ceremonies,” who leads weddings, bar mitzvahs, confirmations, christenings, circumcisions, funerals, to be hired by anyone.

Among the smart ways to think of God, the book says:

* Consider God “the beginning of the beginning” of everything, before the big bang, before the time-space continuum, before energy and matter, before any universe. * Recognize “God is living” in the present. This doesn’t mean he breathes air and digests foods but that God’s infinity “permeates everything,” a “strange quality called consciousness.”

* As “the creator,” God must have “one heck of an IQ”--the “ultimate prodigy.” You can see this supreme intelligence at work “if we look at creation.”

* He gave humanity “truly godlike” qualities, his free will to share in shaping creation, the source both of humanity’s suffering and dignity, to make choices. God “can’t just swoop down and make our lives perfect. That would be an insult against our humanity, our nature. It would violate the very free spirit he gave us. . . . He must allow man rope, even if he hangs himself.”

* “God is personal” and he has “real consequences for your life” and “must become the standard by which you evaluate your decisions.”

* God is forever, confronting the “power of death.” God lifts the “executioner’s mask” and “says we are immortal” because we were created in his immortal spirit. That is our true nature. “God says our consciousness lives on.”