You Tricked Me

Originally Written (June 7, 2006)

As a child there are many false stories told to you. My mom told me about Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Frosty, Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and many more. My mother made one thing clear every time she told us about these characters; that we knew they were fictional and not real. We watched movies of Santa Clause and his elves, but we knew who the presents came from on Christmas morning. We knew who gave us our Easter baskets.
Mom and dad also made it clear that Jesus and God were not fiction characters. Every time they read out of the bible to me, my parents talked as if they were teaching history. This distinction of fictional and non-fictional helped me to combat the Abraham Maslow thoughts on God.

“Because science is severely deficient in details of origin, Maslow held that man had invented God as a kind of false bridge from one need to the next.” (Miller 30). Maslow later recanted this view of God. Many people however think this way. People start to wonder is Jesus real, is God real.

Fighting this battle makes it hard when Christians neglect their strongest evangelical tool, love. The Catholic Church is trying to combat the damage cause by ten thousand cases of sexual misconduct by the priest against children. Protestants have had their combatants also, with evangelism schemes. Many still remember the Fay or the Tilton shows. Also many non-Christians have a hard time realizing the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons are different from Southern Baptist, Methodist, Baptist, Assembly of God, Nazarene, and many other protestant distinctions.

God is not something man invented to be a bridge. If God was invented then, who invented Him? If the answer is man then who invented man? This train of thought collapses on itself, because evolution is looking more and more impossible with every year that passes.
Only one religion is not a list of do’s and don’ts. Only one stands on the principle of grace and mercy, just those two alone, grace and mercy, amaze me.