I Was Blind

I was blind to the truth.

In my youth, I didn’t like God much. Don’t get me wrong. Jesus was great. Who doesn’t love Jesus? It was just that wrathful and severe god of the Old Testament that I disliked.

I Was an Atheist Too

I don’t think I had a much better image of that god than Richard Dawkins:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

In a way I was an atheist too, right along with Richard Dawkins: I couldn’t believe in such an arbitrary, violent, vengeful, and unloving God. Yet I took a different tack than the professor. I ignored that Old Testament God and focused only on the New Testament God.

The Cross Told the Truth

Focusing on that New Testament God turned out to be the best decision I ever made. For, through the lens of the Cross, that maligned Old Testament God started looking more beautiful. The lies and darkness faded, and I began to see the truth. Instead of an arbitrary and vengeful god, requiring the blood of Jesus for appeasement and my obedience to the letter of the law, a God emerged that is more interested in my healing than in retribution, more interested in a trusting friendship than my legalistic sacrifices.

Beginning To See Past the Lies

The lies I believed about God kept me from Him. As those lies have been one by one replaced with truth, I have come closer to Him and have had to make many changes in the way I understand authority, perfection, salvation, gender, and many other things. The scriptures have come alive and, tempered by nature and experience, have led me past a law written in stone to a law written on my heart. This new picture of God has transformed me and I now say with Ebenezer Scrooge, “I’m not the man I was!”

Seeing the truth about God is what this website is about. The picture of Him that you see here may be different than you’ve seen before. Take a look.

I was blind, but now I (am beginning to) see.