God the puppeteer, who created free will but
takes it back when it gets inconvenient;
God the potentate, whose interest is self-love;
God the persecutor, who created life to trap it in its own ignorance;
God the mighty male to whom obedience, subservience, and deference were the only proper responses, and in whose being women were apparent only by their absence.
I have come to the conclusion, after a lifetime of looking for God, that a divinity such as any of these is simply a graven image of ourselves, not a God big enough to believe in.
All of those images, ironically, actually block the image of the presence of God in life for me. All of them made a mockery of the very definition of God -- the fullness of being -- who, having created us, wills us well and not woe, good and not grief, and all of us fullness of life, not some of us inert and invisible nothingness.
