In God’s image . . . No!

By The NewsDay | Feb. 5, 2014 | 5 Min read

God created man in his own image? No! Man created God in his own image!

From the Editor with Nevanji Madanhire To understand the important difference between these two diametrically opposed statements is to understand the problem with today’s church.

Christians have an imagination of God: He is the Old Man who lives in an idyllic place called heaven; they even talk of the Pearly Gates that enclose him.

The Muslims differ radically; there cannot be representation of God in an image, or that of the Prophet Mohammed. The Muslims probably saw the danger of humanising their deity.

Christians have endowed God with human qualities, they have made him human. First, he has to be a man. But that comes with several attendant problems. Because he is a man, they had to give him a son; all men love sons! But a son doesn’t just come, he should be borne by woman preferably a virgin; hence they gave God the Virgin Mary.

Presentations of the Virgin Mary have to portray her as young and beautiful beyond measure. When God was westernised, the Virgin Mary was westernised too, hence she is blonde and slim. Look at the Western concept of beauty as strutted upon catwalks by their models. Models are preferred if they are blonde and have blue eyes, like the Virgin Mary.

So, what human quality has God been given by this? He is lascivious like any man who desires a virgin; he is patriarchal like any man who prefers the boy child to the girl child. There is never any imagination in the Christian faith that Jesus could have been a woman, let alone that God could be of any other gender than male.

Therefore all the physical attributes given to God, are those of a man. Simply put, that is how man created God in his own image.

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But it gets worse when one leaves the physical attributes and goes to the intellectual/emotional/spiritual attributes.

God is jealous. Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other gods before me”; Exodus 20:5: “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”

Besides being jealous, he is also vengeful and will punish anyone who strays. Vengeance, is one of the most human of all human qualities. It has to be given to God, so that there is no question of his hegemony over heaven and earth.

As humans created gaols to punish members of their communities that err, so an equivalent has to be created in the skies. There is Hell, where those who have sinned against God will burn forever. That’s God at his most vengeful.

All the human weaknesses imagined, such as those encapsulated in Catholic Catechism as the seven deadly sins have been heaped onto God: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth.

The phenomenon of prosperity gospel and the mushrooming of so-called prophets are results of giving God human attributes. What really do the so-called prophets do? They only help their congregants fulfil their human desires which they say God loves too. For example the congregants’ PRIDE is encouraged and fulfilled through their narcissistic dress sense and their holier-than-thou attitude towards people of different faiths. AVARICE is exhibited in their desire for worldly things such as flashy cars and ostantantious houses. Envy is encouraged in the way the so-called prophets live and the way they encourage their followers to emulate them. It is this envy that keeps the followers hooked to prosperity gospel.

Because God is said to be vengeful, the prophets promote the cardinal sin of WRATH among their followers. Just notice the anger exhibited by their fanatical followers when their so-called prophets are scrutinised. (See the wrath this article will engender!)

The so-called prophets also help their congregants fulfil the worst of human weaknesses. God loved a beautiful virgin, so there is really nothing wrong with LUST. The sickest example of the promotion of lust is obviously the Robert Martin Gumbura case.

Polygamous Gumbura, the leader of the RMG End-Time Messages Church, convicted on Monday of four counts of rape with many others pending, has shown how God can be manipulated even in grossly evil manner to justify human weakness. GLUTTONY and SLOTH are the remaining cardinal sins that prosperity preachers inculcate into the psyches of their fans. T

hey preach continuously about the land of milk and honey and how this land is found not only in heaven, but can be created on earth. Just look at the quantity and quality of food consumed during so-called crusades!

Above all, the preachers encourage SLOTH. They preach the gospel of miracle money; people don’t have to work, they will just find money miraculously credited to their bank accounts. Some were told they should just close their eyes and their palms and, Lo and behold, God would place diamonds in their hands.

The so-called prophets have ditched the seven holy virtues namely, humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance and diligence.

All the problems found in the church today emanate from this humanisation of God in the Christian religion. Other religions which do not take God as human have less inclination towards miracles and prophecy. It should be pointed out that those Muslim sects that have made God human have committed some of the most heinous sins in his name.

Suicide bombers, for example, believe God will reward them with 12 virgins when they go to heaven, implying God lives among innumerable virgins.

God is goodness without end. Ultimate goodness doesn’t come through prophets; it has no policemen on earth. Humanity can only approximate this ultimate goodness, but cannot achieve it. To think that it can be achieved is to spawn the proliferation of people who call themselves God’s substitutes on earth – the prophets.

Now they have trivialised their own God; he is now a soccer loving old man who watches matches before they are played, and reveals the results!