Bridge of sighs?

Was thinking about why so many people have skewed views of God. And this post is going to deal directly with the name of my blog, giving God back his good name. I believe it is because of this.

People, human beings, have in them an innate sense of and desire for God. We come from him, so this only makes sense. So people look up, throughout their lives, to see Him, and to find Him. It is a natural thing for human beings to do. But this is where it starts to get messed up. There is, at the present time, a spiritual reality other than God's hanging around over and throughout our world. This is talked about all throughout the Bible, see Ephesians 6:12, Matthew 4:8-9, etc. This spiritual climate is 180 degrees the polar opposite of God's reality. So people, naturally longing for God, look up to find Him and see Him, and see this other reality, and therefore attribute it to Him.
This has the unfortunate effect of giving God a bad name. Because people think God is unforgiving, angry, harsh... all of the things that are the polar opposite of how He really is.

I was thinking about this this morning as I was singing that song by Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs. In it he is looking up, feeling and experiencing the spiritual climate of unforgiveness, anger, and coldness, and asking why. The Gods look down in anger, etc. Robin Trower is doing just what I explained. Having an innate sense of God, and looking for Him, and seeing something cold, angry, and unforgiving... and putting the two together.

So why doesn't God do something about this? Well, he has, and is, but there is also this. Because God is so good, and kind, and loving and gentle, and respectful and courteous, he won't act in a lot of the ways that the other side will act. The enemy has no moral boundaries to stay inside of, and so, in the space created by God's respect for humankind's freedom and autononomy, a space created out of love and respect, the enemy moves in , and without any love, or respect, or courtesy, for anybody, dumps a bunch of crap into that space. In other words, the enemy takes full advantage of and exploits the goodness and kindness and respect and courtesy and gentlemanliness of God, and uses it to his advantage. All this has the unfortunate effect of causing humans, people to think that God is a jerk. Which he's not. He is actually the exact opposite.

Once I asked God if I could go to heaven. His answer was to give me a glimpse of it. I saw it, and the best way that I can describe it was this: pure unconditional love, that had absolutely nothing to do with what I have done, good or bad, and they wanted me there really badly. This is the exact opposite of "why so unforgiving, and why so cold?"

All this leads to me to this conclusion, which I have been becoming more and more convinced of the longer I live. Which is this: God really, really, really loves us. A whole lot. A really, really, really lot. And it's only this opressive matrix like spiritual climate that has been pushed onto the world by a lot of evil forces that is keeping us from knowing it.