God is not an Exclamation Point—Eric Weiner

As I wrote recently, I’m thankful for the peace I’ve found and while many religions talk a lot about peace (especially this time of year) some of their methods of helping people find peace seem contradictory.

While I don’t think or expect that God and/or our spiritual journey is to be all fun and games… I do think there’s something wrong when it involves threatening, insisting or shouting.

How does a sign like this help anyone? Does this carry any of the good news and peace that Jesus says he came to bring?

A post, Americans: Undecided About God? by Eric Weiner in the NYT addresses this.

Put bluntly: God is not a lot of fun these days. Many of us don’t view religion so generously. All we see is an angry God. He is constantly judging and smiting, and so are his followers.

No wonder so many Americans are enamored of the Dalai Lama. He laughs, often and well.

Precious few of our religious leaders laugh. They shout. God is not an exclamation point, though. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called “human grace.” Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of this. - Eric Weiner

 

Read the whole post in the New York Times.

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Do you view God as angry? Why or why not?
Does whether you view God as angry or not affect whether you have peace or not?

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