I loved Jesus but my Christian marketing scheme had become a series of Tupperware parties where I would invite over a couple of like-minded friends to discuss the Gospel and then conveniently pack it into an attractive plastic container hoping that it would remain fresh until the next time we met. What I failed to realize was that I was effectively sealing up the life giving breath of the Holy Spirit and preventing it from resuscitating a world desperately gasping for spiritual air. Just like Adam and Eve thought they could hide behind a bush from the God of the universe, I somehow thought I could contain the Spirit of God in an attractive mental container, taking Him out only when I thought it was necessary for Him to make an appearance in my crumbling secular life.

If God was real then He was not a bit part in my personal story, but rather I was a character in His literary masterpiece. I had to accept the fact that I lived in God’s World, He didn’t live in mine. When we demote God to anything less than ruler and Creator of the universe then we have made Him an optional, insignificant, spiritual illusion, created in the image of man. We need to seriously heed the warning of the Peter Principle, which suggests that we rise to our level of incompetence; sober advice for anyone seeking to create God in his or her own image. I challenge everyone to put their gods to the test; does your deity have something to say about life, or is it a mute idol of stone, wood, money, or power? If your God is truly God, He will not be offended by your inquiry. As you pursue this divine truth, you need to be prepared for the sobering realization that in the process you may topple your flimsy but cherished deity. It is unacceptable to be like the shopkeeper in Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch, insisting that your caged dead god is a fierce Norwegian Blue who just happens to be pining for the fjords.