God and You

Though I'm not a huge fan of pigeon-holing people into few, distinct categories, Baylor University's study on Americans' viewpoints regarding God is intriguing and fun to ponder. Plus, this picture from the article is awesome:


Basically, these categories only apply to theists, but I think most people fall into that category, whether or not they want to admit it. The "Distant God" effectively amounts to atheism anyway — if God doesn't intervene, does it really matter if he's there at all?

Anyhow, this is meant to be a point of discussion. It's interesting to think about how our perception of deity (or any sacred entity) affects our general personality. For example, growing up Catholic, I was raised to believe God was constantly dropping the hammer. The threat of God ready to put on the smack-down at every turn perpetuates the fear of being "imperfect," whatever that may mean to me now. In that light, I think this one sums up a lot of it for me: