I followed a friend to their church for a child dedication service yesterday. The periphery of the church was nicely adorned with beautiful flowers; the aesthetics of the inside of the church was breathtaking. The choir was made up of pretty cleavage-baring ladies. In fact the church has swag. I was impressed.

When I first saw the presiding pastor coming out with panache for the service, I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn’t in a cinema; I wanted to be like him. He was nothing short of a Nollywood celebrity – clean-carved fried greasy hair, Armani shirt and suit, St. Michael’s tie, Cartier wrist watch, Wrangler belt, and…ermm…I don’t remember the designer of his shoes. No doubt he has taste.

Later in the service, I guess the Pastor realized that he was unto a big game that Sunday because they were so many new faces, most of them women with well arranged booties that were neatly tucked away in pencil skirts or trousers – I couldn’t help but notice it. My friend works at a top new generation bank.

During what appear like a sermon, the tongue speaking, feet stamping, Bible thumping and iPad browsing Pastor was in no mood to have anything less than the demands he was commanding God to provide. He sounded like he was the boss while God his houseboy.

We have severally made God a liar, a business-like God that asks for money before giving out blessings and favours. We have become so thoughtless that we now believe our scam – that the only way we can attract God’s blessings is by bribing and enticing Him with money. The men of God had made us to give in anticipation that we will receive back a bigger measure from God. We now only measure God’s blessings in terms of cars, houses, jobs, vacations, travel visa, school admission and sugar daddies/mummies.

We have succeeded in making God in our own image. A god that has time to watch and predict football matches, a god that asks for young girls to be sold, a god that assures of miracles on posters and billboards, a god that asks people to kill for him, a god that enforces and receives only money as tithes, a god that blackmails and seduces women during deliverance, a god that travels in private jets, a god that must kill our enemies by fire, a god under our command and control.

Let’s beware of this our new god!

Read more: http://hardballz.com.ng/making-god-image/