There are people who claim to have been told by God that he loves them no matter what they do. That is why we have a culture where people who have got no alleged message themselves listen to those characters and tell people that God loves without fail whether they are bad or good.
There is something obviously elitist and gnostic about that set-up. Remember humility can be a clever mask for pride. People who speak for God end up being God in a sense - in the sense that you let them colour how you see God. You cannot think of God without human input - even if you think you can.
God belief can be actually harmful for many. Some just do not want this alleged love of his and want to make their own way in life.
This applies if God tells you or a spokesperson does.
Being told you are loved by a God – even unconditionally - you cannot really know imposes an invisible obligation to love him back. That is dangerous if it may be that God did in fact not really speak to you or if a person is doing the speaking.
You may not see or prove human love for you but that is different. At least
you can talk to humans and see them. Life can work if you impose obligations
on yourself to respond in love to those who love you. There is no self-respect
where one goes as far as think one is loved by some fairy, angel or god for it
is not necessary. God belief is always potentially harmful.
Then there
is the creation by this alleged God of temptation and other harms such as
death. God is inseparable from what some allegedly authorised and informed
individuals like Jesus say he is. No matter how much a group prays or does
good works for God, it is as prone to temptation, sickness and death as the
godless. Prayer seems to be more about trying to get a perception of meaning –
deep down nobody with any intelligence expects it to help,
Nobody ever
is purely about God. The idea is too coloured with human ideological
meanderings, guesses, opinions, psychological projection and fraud that you
cannot expect anything else. There is a lack of clarity, there is mystery.
Everybody says that God is bigger than what they think or say he is.
God does not need to be real to harm. If God is a projection then in that
sense God is real. We just define him wrong.
Faith is not just faith –
it is also self-influence. It will impact others. You will cast a direct and
indirect influence on them.
God-projection can harm for people will be
the hands and feet of the projection. They will act on “God.”
Take the
Bible. It is only everywhere today because blood was spilt for it, by it and
because it commanded it. New Testament theology claims that all that was
commanded by God – that would include the commands to murder adulteresses etc
– were about preparing the way for Jesus. The cruelty and fear-mongering
unsurprisingly gave privileged religionists great power and influence.