Forgiving, Tolerant, and Fake
We live in an age where many professing Christians say they believe in God. But which God? For many on the progressive left, the God they speak of is not the holy, sovereign Lord of Scripture. Instead, they have built a version of God that reflects their desires: a god of love and tolerance, but not holiness and truth; a god of affirmation, but not accountability.
They proclaim a god who always forgives but never condemns. A god who is love, but not light (1 John 1:5). A god who never says no, never corrects, and never judges. But this is not the God of the Bible. It’s a selective god, made in their image and crafted to comfort without ever confronting.
A Half-God Is No God at All
It’s easy to pick the attributes of God that benefit us. Who doesn’t want a forgiving God? But when we ignore His justice, wrath, and holiness, we’re not worshiping the true God. We’re worshiping a version of ourselves. The God of Scripture is both merciful and just. Exodus 34:6–7 says God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love… but who will by no means clear the guilty.” Likewise, Hebrews 10:31 warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Romans 1:25 describes what happens when people reject God’s truth: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” That’s what’s happening. If we create the God we serve, we are ultimately serving ourselves. But a true God cannot be made by man. He is (Exodus 3:14).
The Danger of Becoming Like the God You Worship
Psalm 135:15–18 speaks of idols “made by the hands of men” and says, “Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” What does that look like today? For many liberal Christians, it shows up as faith without repentance, truth without standards, and a religion of constant affirmation but no transformation.
They become indifferent to sin because their God never rebukes it. They see no need for a Savior because their God never judges. And they redefine morality based on the shifting tides of culture, not the fixed truth of God’s Word.
Who Gets to Decide?
This is the heart of the matter: if we pick and choose what we want to believe about God, who gets to decide what’s true? James 1:17 says that God does “not change like shifting shadows.” In contrast, cultural morality shifts like sand in the wind. We need Scripture to anchor us. As 2 Timothy 3:16–17 reminds us, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching… that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
A god of our own making cannot save us. Only the actual, unchanging, holy God can. And He is not just love. He is Lord.