What God Do You Worship?

One of the more interesting intellectual nuggets that I picked up during the online intensive revolved around people's belief in God.  As spiritual directors, it will be fruitful to determine not whether or not people believe in God--most people do, and certainly people who seek out a spiritual director do.

No, the better question is "Which God do you believe in?"  Or "Which God do you worship?"  I was surprised at the possible answers and how much of the population believes in which God.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to find out that I believe in a benevolent God.  I was surprised to find out that only 23% of the population believes in a benevolent God.

Before I go any further, let me talk about the source for these statistics.  There was a USA Today article some time ago, which I found but then can't find again.  I don't remember who was polled--were these church goers or the general population?  But the statistics do seem relevant, regardless.  The statistic of 23% is a rough statistic, not precise.

So, if one doesn't believe in a benevolent God, then what's left?  There's the authoritarian God, which 23% of the population believes in.  The other two types of God are critical and distant, and 23 % of the population believes in each.

If 75% of the population believes in a God that's on some sort of spectrum from distant to vengeful, it's no wonder that people aren't much interested in going to church or that they're attending out of fear.  How on earth do we minister to people with these beliefs?

I don't have any easy answers, of course.  But it's an interesting way of framing the question.  We tend to think that we need to convince people of the existence of God--but it may be much harder than that.