AN agnostic friend has an interesting opinion of God: "He's probably a nice guy, but he yells too muuch."

Another friend also uses the word nice when describing Jesus. He's the gentle man, perhaps a bit fragile, who lets children sit on his lap, he says. "He's your typical nice guy."

Nice? Author Stephen Long says many of us really don't know how to view God. We prefer the facile banality of a nice God; one that makes sense rather than a seemingly unpredictable God.

So we fashion God in our own image; a God who approves of our tastes, judgments and social biases.

In other words, because we are afraid of the Big Picture, we prefer to look at the little pictures.

Some of the wiser sociologists have observed we inhabit a therapeutic world where the concepts of right and wrong, truth and falsity, are ambiguous.

Consequently, there is a fast-food quality to spiritual life. Drop in your coin and get what you want from the machine. Choose the attributes of God you would like him to have.

Recent surveys show that most people in Western countries believe in God, angels and the afterlife but do not think much about it.

We try to make God a nice version of us. But in doing so we ignore the words of God that are sometimes shocking and uncomfortable. He calls on us to be tender-hearted, but also tough-minded.

Long says God is not nice. "But he is good and just, and that trumps nice every time."

Long believes God walked among us in the form of Jesus, but not in a "MTV-approved pop-friendly way". Jesus, says Long, was honest in his dealings with everyone. "What he said was often offensive to modern ears. He knew that truth was the face of compassion and love. Not being nice."

Long's most recent book lists what he thinks God is not. God is not a capitalist, not a leftist either. He taught with love, and sometimes his love was sharp and seemingly hard-edged.

Writer Brian McLaren says as a child he perceived Jesus as a fellow in strange robes who held a small sheep in one arm and always seemed to have the other raised "as if he were hailing a taxi". He has come to realise that his vision was too small. Too nice.

McLaren says the secret message of God via Jesus is not primarily about getting to Heaven. "It doesn't give us an exit ramp or escape hatch from this world. Rather, it thrusts us back into the-here-and-now so we can be part of God's dreams for planet Earth."

McLaren says Christian scholars throughout the ages have too often created a Jesus cast more or less in their own images. The romanticised versions should go, he says.

"Jesus's words and ways were the primal, disruptive, inspiring, terrifying, shocking hopeful words and ways of a revolutionary who seeks to overthrow the status quo in nearly every conceivable way," McLaren says.

"Whenever he showed up in a religious setting or synagogue or temple, he tended to disrupt the normal proceedings.

"Jesus confronts the dark spirit of the religious elite of his day. He dances on their dividing lines, violates their taboos, honours their villains and vilifies their honourees, He tells the truth."

And the truth is uncomfortable, even for some of the churches.

The Indian Jesuit priest and mystic Anthony de Mello once wrote of a sinner expelled from a church.

The sinner took his woes to God saying: "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner."

"What are you complaining about?" says God. "They won't let me in either."

An Australian preacher told how he had always wanted to see Mt Everest.

Climbing through the foothills of Nepal, he imagined how the first sight of the massive mountain would affect him. He had waited so long for this moment.

Suddenly, through the mist he glimpsed what must have been the mountain and his heart leapt.

"Everest," he said out loud.

"No," said his guide, "Look up."

The preacher looked up and saw the mighty Everest towering over the suddenly smaller peak he had first seen.

Later, he mused on the spiritual significance of his experience.

So often, he thought, we fail to see the big picture.

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on NEWS.com.au