I saw a
USA Today story last week about a new book,
America's Four Gods: What We Say about God and What That Says about Us by Paul Froese
and Christopher Bader.
The book lays out the four different ways that people think about God:
- The Authoritative God (engaged in people's lives and is judgmental)
- The Benevolent God (engaged in people's lives, but is loving)
- The Critical God (keeps track of our sins, but doesn't intervene in the world)
- The Distant God (created the world, but doesn't intervene in the world)
What struck me about these descriptions is that an integral part of a person's portrait of God is how that person thinks God communicates with humanity. So even when it comes to something very abstract, like God, we find that communication is the heart of how people make sense of things. Communication is such a great field!
Cook Library doesn't have this new book, but you can request it through
interlibrary loan.
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