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Have you ever witnessed a hot air balloon festival?

It is a spectacular sight to see.

Balloons in all their glory, bearing all manner of colours, designs and sometimes even shapes, soar into the sky, showcasing their beauty and majesty to those below.

Those on the ground are often in awe.

Pointing here, there and everywhere.

It is hard to know where to look.

So much grandeur.

Often the balloons bear a name.

They are branded — sponsored by different organisations and groups.

And like the balloons themselves, the identity of the person, group or organisation who invested in the balloon — those who put it in the sky — is there for all to see.

A hot air balloon is a great way to promote something and draw attention to a business or brand.

Nothing says ‘look at me’ like a hot air balloon.

Just seeing a solitary balloon gracing the sky with all its treasures is quite striking.

It really stands out as the key feature in an expansive skyscape.

But a multitude is something else.

It’s quite the competition, actually. As the people on the ground contemplate which one they admire most.

Of course, everyone will have a different opinion, because we all have different tastes.

To someone uneducated in hot air balloons, just the sight of such an object in the air would be a source of amazement.

‘What keeps that thing in the sky’, they might ask.

Well, generally, the fuel upon which a hot air balloon lifts is liquified gas.

The fuel is burned to heat the air inside the envelope and this allows the balloon to rise and float.

If the balloon runs out of hot air, and no longer has the capacity to heat the air inside the envelope, the only force working on the balloon is gravity.

It will no longer have the capacity to grace the sky, because the fuel that kept it there no longer exists.

It’s done.

And the balloon will begin its descent.

Returning to the ground to take its place alongside those it sought to wow and inspire only moments before.

Hot air balloons can only fly as long as they have a source of fuel.

When that runs out, their reign is over.

In many ways, when it comes to God, the Medium writing platform — as it is with the world at large, I might add — is like a hot air balloon festival.

A ‘Look-at-my-God’ and ‘Look at what I ‘know’ about God’ spectacular.

Come one and come all — showcase your personally tailored ‘gods’ and be educated about the ‘gods’ of others.

Only they do not share what they ‘know’ about God. They share what is in their imaginations.

It has become a mecca for those who wish to turn God into whatever it is they want him to be, and then to launch their creation — which can be more accurately described as an exploitation — into the sky.

And just like many of the hot air balloons, these personal gods bear the identity and brand of those who floated them.

They do not bear the name of God — or his blessing or consent.

They bear the name of one who exploits Him.

And what is shared about God by these people is not something God wanted to be shared.

For if he wanted it said, he would have ‘floated’ these things himself.

Just as the hot air balloon must run on fuel, so too must any personal notions of God laid out before the world.

The ideas, opinions and explanations ‘floated’ about God — both for and against God’s existence — are fuelled only by those who have offered ideas, opinions and explanations.

There is no substance to what they say.

Their fuel is cheap, diluted, self-serving and unsolicited.

The fuel that gives rise to these ‘gods’ is tainted with theft, dishonour and exploitation.

They fill the sky that is collective thought with ideas and explanations of God that are not fuelled by the only resource upon which any definition of God should be floated.

The fuel that is God’s own direct Word and testimony.

Any explanation of God offered to the world that does not come from God is by its nature, Godless.

If there is any ‘truth’ to the hot air that fuels these obscenities — that reduce the purity and sacredness of God’s Word into some kind of perverse changeling, a deviant version of the real thing — it is that each is a misrepresentation and exploitation of God.

This is not me directing judgment or accusations at anyone.

This is me stating fact.

If I do not know with one hundred percent certainty who or what God is, and have not heard of the things I share from him, then anything I might ever place before the eyes and ears of the world about God is a textbook misrepresentation.

It’s what it is.

You will see, on Medium, those who accuse others of misrepresenting and exploiting God and yet the substance of all they have to offer — the fuel upon which their personal notions and ideas of God float — is no different.

Our world has turned itself into a hot air balloon festival where people showcase and promote their exploitations and misrepresentations of God.

‘Look at my ‘god’ everyone!’

Even the Abrahamic faiths do this.

Their balloon, the firmly established incorporeal ‘god’, a concept God himself has labelled ‘absurd’.

We live in the era of the ‘personal god’

And just as it is with the balloon spectacular — it’s hard to know where to look!

Who is right and who is wrong?

Which ‘god’ do I like best?

Or can I design my own?

Who do I need God to be so I can love and honour him?

What qualities do I think God should have?

Go to Medium and write for the Backyard Church publication.

They’ll receive your exploitation of God with open arms.

If they like it, you will be applauded.

They will even call what you write, ‘truth’.

Only the one true God, who Jesus served, said, ‘I am who I am!’

God was clear.

‘I am something specific!

God can be only one being, bearing one true nature and form.

He also made it clear he was going to reveal the truth about that nature and form.

And whatever that ‘truth’ is, is going to be the only truth.

The only definition of God that will run on an eternal fuel.

The never-ending fuel that is God’s own Word and testimony.

And it is our reception and embrace of that definition of God — or our rejection of it — that will define our faith forever.

This is the knowledge we have been provided with, about God, by God

And may God help those who present their personal ideas about God as the competition. And who thought they would take liberties with God’s Word and identity that were never theirs to take.

The hot air balloon spectacular that is our world’s misrepresentation and exploitation of God, can only last as long as the falsehoods, thefts and betrayals that fuel it.

That said, it is a ‘spectacular’ that should never have existed in the first place.

It is a ‘spectacular’ that had neither God’s blessing nor consent.

God was also clear that he despised those who sought to explain him without knowing him.

To float a ‘hot air balloon’ into the sky featuring the ‘this is my opinion on God’ or the ‘this is our opinion on God’ label, is to defy, misrepresent and exploit God.

What is laid out before the eyes of the world is an idea of God that did not come from him.

But it has been launched nonetheless.

Someone has decided the world should know God as they believe him to be.

And what they have to say will take its place in the festival, alongside all the other exploitations and betrayals of God.

And just as it is with an actual hot air balloon festival — people herd below, awestruck and eager to look skyward at the false gods offered by those who defy the one true God.

The one who said, ‘I am who I am!’

Meaning, ‘I am not who you say I am or what you want me to be. My nature and form are my nature and form. It is what it is, and it is mine to define. And one day I will tell you exactly who I am. Be watchful for that definition. For only then, will you know me as I know myself.’

But for those who claim to love, follow and trust in Jesus on Medium, his Word — which is the Word of God — was never enough.

If it was Jesus and God they loved and trusted, they wouldn’t be on that platform — writing or reading.

But even if they were, they would not swallow one word that came from one who did not know God.

Online platforms like Medium that permit the exploitation of God are no more than a hot air balloon show where people gather to clap, cheer, follow and adore those who ‘float’ their misrepresentations and exploitations of God at a time when God has floated his own Word, revelation and testimony.

They have put God to work. Forcing God to compete with them and their falsehoods.

What a faith that is.

There are a multitude of personal ‘gods’ that have been floated into the sky that is collective thought.

And God has floated his own.

Of them all, only one belongs in that sky.

All others run on a fuel of theft, deceit, exploitation and betrayal.

Only one man warned us not to attend, embrace or participate in this festival of misrepresentation and abuse.

Not to launch such a balloon, and not to look skyward with praise and adoration for them.

He warned God would one day float his own.

It was God’s Word on himself that Jesus told the world to remain watchful for.

But even those who claim to love him and those who claim to have faith in God have chosen to blow hot air.

There is no substance to what they offer.

For they had to reject and renounce the one pillar of faith that is unique to faith in Jesus to do what they do.

That is to reject any notion or definition of God that did not come from God.

And, while living with conditional expression — the way of life that honours God as he asked to be honoured — remaining watchful for the ‘balloon’ fuelled by God’s own Word.

The only one that would ever remain floating when it came to the world’s understanding of God.

The one that would never to be altered or changed.

God has offered this truth.

And he has done it with the trademark clarity and simplicity for which he — and Jesus — are famous.

In the eyes of God and Jesus, we either have faith in them, or we don’t.

Saying one loves God or Jesus, but then launching a personally ordained misrepresentation of God, aimed at steering collective thought towards the misrepresentation, is no act of love.

And no act of respect.

It is an act of defiance against God and Jesus.

An attempt to wrestle control of what the world knows and understands about God, from God, and to place it in their own hands.

Without God’s blessing and without knowing God, they are trying to get the world to invest in their misrepresentations and exploitations of him.

And they do this when God’s suffering is at its greatest, and when he has spoken for himself.

And while attempting to play god over God — an unforgivable violation of God — these people also place themselves in the role of judge, jury and executioner of what they describe as the shallow, immature and abusive faiths of others.

I cannot — no matter how hard I try — get my head around someone thinking so little of God, and so highly of themselves, that they would choose such a path.

Prioritising their self-serving and exploitative word about God over God’s Word.

God believes he could not have made it more simple when it comes to knowing how to express our love for him.

It does not matter what they say.

Or what they declare about their own faith.

Or how dismissive these people are of the faiths of others.

To do what they do — many on an almost daily basis — one must treat God like trash.

If they genuinely believe in and trust God and Jesus — that God was going to reveal the truth about himself to the world — then what are they doing competing with them?

The truth is they can’t have believed.

They’d be watching for God if they believed and trusted Jesus.

One who loved God as he asked to be loved, and one who loved God in a way that benefitted and honoured God, would not do what they do.

They would not educate the world on their personal ‘gods’ and they would not dare try to explain God.

Yesterday — at the time of writing — I had an MRI on my ankle.

I asked the person who took the scan to tell me if she knew what was wrong.

She replied, ‘that’s above my pay grade. I’m not qualified to share that information. My job is to take great photos of your ankle — and they’re great!’

It will never be the ‘job’ of anyone who does not know God and who has not heard from him, to explain God.

They are not qualified, they do not have God’s blessing and they do not know God as he knows himself.

They are not referencing an image of God provided by himself.

They are drawing a picture of what they want God to be and showcasing that before the eyes of the world.

And every one of these violations — these branded hot air balloons — bears a name.

And these names identify themselves as one who has misrepresented and exploited God without consent.

What they are ‘qualified’ to do is demonstrate their love and respect for God by living as he asked them to.

With conditional expression.

We can know easily if one has God’s blessing to say the things they say.

Either God asked for them to be said — or he didn’t.

If God permitted our self-serving personalisation’s of him, or of he wanted us to be watchful for or embrace our favourite misrepresentations and exploitations of him, he would have told us so.

We can also know these people who exploit God in this way do not have his blessing, because he has already explained himself to the world.

He has delivered on his Word.

No era has been more abusive and exploitative of God than our modern one.

The same era that embraced the notion of the personal god is the same era in which the one true God revealed himself to the world.

But the world was not watching.

The world did not believe in and trust Jesus.

And it did not believe in and trust God.

And my how God has suffered because of this.

Hot air balloon festivals do not last long.

And nor will any era that reduces God to an idea that exists only in someone’s head.

God knows who he is.

He also knows why he says the things he says, and does the things he does.

And unless he has asked us to say something about him directly, if we love him as he has asked to be loved, we will say nothing.

The job of those who do not know him is not to define him, nor to explain him.

It is to live with conditional expression.

Let history show that the rise of the non-consensual and exploitative personal god matched perfectly the period of God’s own revelation to the world.

At the same time God was saying ‘I am this’, his abusers were saying, ‘I think god is this’.

And when God said, ‘I am fact, have faith in me’, they were saying, ‘God is a mystery, have faith in me.’

We know who they are, for their unsolicited and self-serving exploitations and misrepresentations of God bear their name.

They placed God in their own hands and tried to mould him into whatever they wanted him to be.

In his greatest hour of need.

That will not be forgotten.

Nor will the fact that this ‘festival’ of betrayal and exploitation had an army of followers and supporters.

Adoring and applauding the most abusive era God has ever had to endure.

It is one thing not to believe in God, and then do as one pleases.

But to claim to believe and have faith in God, and promote that faith and then do as one pleases with God, is another thing altogether.

Treatment of God does not, and cannot, get more obscene than this.

These people have not taken God and Jesus at their Word.

They have tried to substitute God’s Word — which has returned as Jesus promised — with their own.

That is their eternal legacy when it comes to God.

When he needed us most they were standing on his shoulders.

And so it is.

Amen

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Copyright - Tim Guthrie 2024

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Note:

There are three books on Conditional Expression where God -or Life - specifically references the the non-consensual exploitation and abuse he experiences at the hands of Medium and its writers. They do not know God and yet shred his dignity with their rampant misrepresentations and unsolicited opinions.

They are:

22 Days of God and the Fight for LIfe

The Road to Easter

Contra Mundum: God Against the World

Click on the book title to visit that page.