{"id":3136,"date":"2015-09-20T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T14:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3136"},"modified":"2015-09-16T16:51:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T20:51:00","slug":"smart-and-stupid-ways-to-think-about-god-20150920","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3136","title":{"rendered":"Smart and Stupid Ways to Think About God — 20150920"},"content":{"rendered":"

The seventh stupid<\/em> way to think about God is<\/p>\n

GOD THE MACHO MAN.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Picture1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boy, is this one of the stupidest ways to think about God ever! And one of the most common. He\u2019s spread throughout Judeo-Christian thinking like an epidemic. All you have to do is to look at the popular picture of God and you\u2019ll see the Macho Man\u2019s mystique. God is strong, silent, distant, prone to anger, demanding, obstinate, and, of course, controlling! He controls religious dogma, rituals and practice. He controls prayer books and biblical myths. He\u00a0\u00a0 controls the ministry, the priesthood and the rabbinate. Not to mention the conscience of people of both sexes.<\/p>\n

God is Our King, not our Queen! He is our Father, not our Mother. Yet, despite his pervasiveness, despite the overwhelming institutionalization and entrenchment of this idea, God the Macho Man is a fraud – a dangerous fraud. He has been used to perpetrate the myth of male superiority for millennia. He has bolstered the influence and spheres of power of some of the most brutal males in history. He has contaminated theology with sexist ideology, reflecting societal bias, not mature thought. For God the Macho Man is fictitious, an invention on \u201cmanmade\u201d standards. Therefore, he is also one of the most idolatrous creations there is. God the Macho Man is made in the image and likeness of man.<\/p>\n

But it is not just women who are oppressed by a god like this. Everyone is. Because God the Macho Man may be big and impressive and strong, but he is not a true God. A Macho God does not nurture. He does not heal. He is not caring or tender. He bestows his love more in the form of discipline than concern.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it, even for men, God the Macho Man is hardly a good role model. He is not a real man at all, but an unrealistic, polarized caricature of maleness, devoid of all sensitivities. As oppressive to men as to women.<\/p>\n

There is real danger in allowing society\u2019s standards to determine the personality of God. Standards that can be undermined and manipulated by any power elite to subordinate whole segments of a population.<\/p>\n

Where is the God created \u201cAdam\u201d – Hebrew for \u201cmankind?\u201d The God of men and<\/em> women. Where is our real God hiding?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll never find Him until we take God the Machno Man and change Him to not be in mankind\u2019s image and likeness but rather in His own image and likeness. Of course in order to do this we must give up our ideas <\/em>of who we want God to be and, rather, seek to find the God Who IS.<\/p>\n

It would seem that the God that we have created was created by men. I wonder what God would be like if He was the creation of women?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The seventh stupid way to think about God is GOD THE MACHO MAN. Boy, is this one of the stupidest ways to think about God ever! And one of the most common. He\u2019s spread throughout Judeo-Christian thinking like an epidemic. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ways-to-think-about-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3137,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions\/3137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}