The four gods

A new survey into American religious views is reported by Ekklesia today. Most interestingly, the survey asks deeper questions than “Do you believe in God?”, looking at what people think God is like. And, it turns out, more Americans believe in a judgmental God than believe in a benevolent one.

one area that emerged from the survey which has excited the researchers is what they call the “Four Gods.” These depend on how engaged people think God is in the world and how angry God is with the world…
31.4 percent believe in an Authoritarian God, who is very judgmental and engaged, 25 percent believe in a Benevolent God, who is not judgmental but [is] engaged, 23 percent believe in a Distant God, who is completely removed and 16 percent believe in a Critical God, who is judgmental but not engaged.
What researchers also found was that the type of god people believe in can predict their political and moral attitudes more than simply looking at their religious tradition…“In general, what we find is people who believe in a more angry and engaged God tend to be moral absolutists [and] political conservatives.”

Personally, if I had to come down somewhere on these axes, I’d come down on the side of “benevolent and engaged”. I’m not denying that God carries out judgement, but that this isn’t the defining characteristic of God’s nature. If God wanted primarily to judge us, there would have been no Incarnation. The fact of the Incarnation shows that God is engaged with Creation, and that He wants to save it more than to condemn it.

How about you?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 12:48pm on 13 September 2006
Category: Faith, Links

Sorry about the above comment only containing my name! I haven’t posted on this format before.

I contend that it doesn’t matter what we believe about God but only what is true about Him.

We can arrive at what we think is truth via two methods. We can read and study what was written about God and Jesus, salvation and the afterlife, or we can come up with something else.

Much of the world, non-Christians and a host of other religions believe in god. Their belief in god is a god who is abstract and this all encompassing god of only love who will send all the “good people” to heaven, and all the “bad people” somewhere else.

The truth is that there is are no “good people and bad people”. There is only the saved and the unsaved. Our desired perception of this truth as something else doesn’t change the truth.

God is a God of love. He is also a God of judgement. If He did not have judgement, we would not need salvation because the alternative would also be acceptable. If we didn’t need salvation, then our sins would be acceptable to this God of only love.

Truth regarding God and salvation teaches us that He does love us so much that He created us, and wants us to be saved. However, if we are still in our sins, because we believe He won’t really punish us, we are not saved, and will never truly know the love He has for us.

Rightthinker-Andrea (URL)
4:11pm on 13 September 2006

The poll is as bogus as many. Justice and mercy are equally of God. “Judgmental”, as the negative connotation it carries, is not.

Let’s do the critical analysis that Baylor (Liberal theologically and politically) conveniently leave out.

There are 77 questions on the exam. Despite claiming that “there are 29 questions relating to God’s character and behavior”, and small notes that point out that only fourteen were actually considered to contribute to their assessment, there are a grand total of TWO that actually address this area. Here they are:

Even if you might not believe in God, based on your personal
understanding, what do you think God is like?
a. A cosmic force in the universe
b. Removed from worldly affairs.
c. Removed from my personal affairs.
d. Concerned with the well-being of the world .
e. Concerned with my personal well-being .
f. Angered by human sin
g. Angered by my sins
h. Directly involved in worldly affairs
i. Directly involved in my affairs .
j. A “He” . How well do you feel that each of the following words
describe God?

a. Absolute
b. Critical
c. Distant
d. Ever-present
e. Fatherly .
f. Forgiving
g. Friendly
h. Just
i. Kind
j. Kingly
k. Loving
l. Motherly
m. Punishing
n. Severe
o. Wrathful
p. Yielding

There is a 5 point scale to check, in the first case “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” and for the second “very well” to “not at all”.

Contrast these questions with the definition of the “authoritarian God”:

Individuals who believe in the Authoritarian God tend to
think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs. They tend to
believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global
events such as economic upturns or tsunamis. They also tend to feel that God is quite
angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.

Simply put, the data does not support their assertions. There is no basis for claiming any of the respondednts think God is “very angry” or that they think he is “highly involved”. Furthermore, as I would check strongly agree in “angered by human/my sin” and “concerned for human/my well-being”, I would not fit in any category. Of course, the researchers conveniently failed to mention how exactly the categories were assigned and that they forced everyone into one of the four.

Crap research, done for publicity purposes. Ekklesia jumped right on it, as expected.

PS – I just double checked – there is not another single question that could lead someone to think a respondent believed in any type of “angry god”.

Hammertime () (URL)
5:57pm on 13 September 2006

Yeah, these things are always over-interpreting the data. But, still, they might have tapped into something. There does seem to be a large group of people in America particularly (although they crop up elsewhere also) who see God primarily as judging and condemning, with God’s actions primarily as about dishing out “justice” to those who have angered Him. This stereotype is especially outspoken after any sort of disaster (we heard from them after the terrorist attacks in the USA and UK, after Hurricane Katrina, after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, after the AIDS epidemic hit the news etc.), saying that this event is some sort of judgement from God.

By contrast, the Good News of Christ is that God really doesn’t act this way. Faced with a similar event (the tower collapse), Jesus was asked who sinned and He replied that no one had. Bad stuff just happens. More than that, the Incarnation shows that God isn’t satisfied simply to condemn the sinful Creation – He wants to redeem it.

As I said in the original article, I agree with you that we cannot say that God is either angry or loving. God can (like any person) be both. However, it is legitimate to ask which characteristic is seen as defining. And the answer of the Christian cannot be that anger or simple justice has the last word. Only by love can Creation be redeemed. Only Love is said in the Bible to be synonymous with God. It’s just that this isn’t some sappy, weak, fluffy sort of love, such as humans revere.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
7:47pm on 13 September 2006

I agree with you in all points John, except one word: “Large”. There will always be a body of people with distorted views of anything, but the only people I know who may focus more on God’s anger are legalist fundamentalists (as opposed to non-legalist fundamentalists). They are a smaller group, and do not even have a denomination they claim as their own.

As an afterthought, I would hope that their are connections between our faith and our politics. If our faithis the most important thing in our lives, and it should be, then it should infuse everything we do!

Hammertime () (URL)
3:55pm on 15 September 2006