A god who only ever approves of you is worth examining closely. The God of Scripture repeatedly contradicts the people who claim him. He refuses to bless their mistreatment of others, even when they stand in his house and use his name. That is the working test in this guide, and you will turn it on yourself before anyone else: is the God you talk about the God of Scripture, or a god shaped to serve someone’s power?
You can work through it alone in one sitting or with a group over two. It moves through three passages, a claim from a Jude 3 Project panel on faith and public life, an honest objection, and a written exercise. A companion piece takes up how faith should shape political choices. This one stays closer to home.
Start with what you already believe God wants
Before reading anything, take a sheet of paper and finish this sentence three times: God wants me to… Write what you actually believe, not what sounds right. Then finish a second sentence once: God would never ask me to… Set the page aside. You will come back to it.
The reason for this step comes from Bishop Leah Daughtry, presiding prelate of the House of the Lord Churches. Moderator Stephen Harris mentioned a friend’s description of public life as a battleground of competing gods. Daughtry pushed the idea further: “I think what we have to accept is that while we may call the higher being God, our gods are different. Our gods are not always the same.”
She grounded that claim in history. Of the enslavers in America, she said, “They didn’t consider black people to be made in the image of God. They were Christians. They went to church every Sunday.” The unsettling part is the sincerity. Their worship was real to them, and the God they worshiped did not object to what they were doing. That is why you start with your own page. Distortion rarely feels like distortion from the inside.
Read the text: worship that becomes a license
The clearest biblical picture of this problem is Jeremiah’s sermon at the temple gate. Read Jeremiah 7:1-15 slowly before going on. This is prophetic speech addressed to the people of Judah as they enter the temple in Jerusalem. Jeremiah is not speaking to pagans. He is speaking to worshipers of the LORD, in the LORD’s house.
Notice first what the people were saying. Jeremiah warns them, “Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these” (Jeremiah 7:4). It was the temple of the LORD. The lie was in what they trusted those words to do. They treated the right place and the right phrases as a guarantee of safety.
Notice next what the LORD asks instead. In verses 5-6 the conditions are concrete: deal justly with neighbors, stop oppressing the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, stop shedding innocent blood, stop following other gods. The call to worship and the call to protect vulnerable people arrive in the same sentence.
Then comes the sharpest line. The LORD describes people who steal, murder and commit adultery, and then “come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?” (Jeremiah 7:10). To be “delivered” here means to be rescued or made safe, and many modern translations render the phrase along the lines of We are safe. The people left worship feeling protected, then went back to the same harm. Their religion did not restrain them. It reassured them.
Verse 11 names the result: “Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” (Jeremiah 7:11). A den is where robbers hide between robberies. Jesus quoted this line when he drove the sellers out of the temple (Matthew 21:13), the same God taking the same side against a house of worship that had become a cover.
Pause and observe: Underline every phrase in Jeremiah 7:1-15 that describes what the people said. Circle every phrase that describes what they did. Which list does the LORD treat as decisive?
A second witness: the calf at Sinai
When the people make the golden calf, they declare, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). Then Aaron builds an altar and announces, “To morrow is a feast to the LORD” (Exodus 32:5).
Interpreters read this scene in two main ways. Many understand the people as trying to worship the LORD through an image they had made, keeping his covenant name while reshaping him into something manageable. Others read it as a more open turn to other gods, with Aaron’s announcement as a confused attempt to cover it. Faithful readers differ. The verdict does not change between them. In verses 7-8 the LORD says the people have corrupted themselves and turned aside quickly. God’s saving act has been credited to a god of their own making. As in Jeremiah, religious language survives, and the true God interrupts.
The test Jesus gives, and the test Daughtry draws from it
Jesus put the question directly: “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). The speakers use the right title. What Jesus questions is whether the title is connected to obedience. In Luke the verse closes a sermon full of costly commands: love enemies, give without expecting return, refuse to judge harshly. The Lord being addressed is one who asks for things.
Daughtry draws on this same language. She asks, “Where do I find people who are saying, Lord, Lord, but they don’t want my people to have anything to eat, and they’re not concerned that the water is dirty and they’re not concerned that people are safe”. She describes the God she worships as one who says “every life is valued and that I’ve made you in the image and the likeness of my own self. And therefore, your life has value.”
Her standard rests on the creation account, so read it for yourself: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). Pause and observe: Read Genesis 1:26-28. Who is included in the image? Is anyone excluded? What does God give the people he has made in verses 28-29?
Be careful about which step belongs to the text and which belongs to Daughtry. Genesis states that every human being bears God’s image. It does not mention clean water or food programs. Moving from image-bearing to concern for hunger and safety is her application, though Scripture makes similar moves elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 7:6. She is not saying that people who disagree with her about how to meet human needs worship another god. She is saying that a god who regards some people’s dignity and survival as beneath concern is not the God of Genesis. Of a believer who treats her that way, she says plainly: “You’ve devalued me. And in that way you sin.” The charge is sin, which keeps the matter inside Christian moral speech rather than turning it into an insult.
The honest objection: is “a different god” too strong?
Scripture teaches that God is one. If someone misunderstands him, that is error, not a second deity. Talk of other gods can make every disagreement sound like apostasy.
Jeremiah helps here. He never says there are two gods in the temple. He says the worshipers have attached the LORD’s name to a security he never offered. A person can address the one true God while trusting a portrait of him that contradicts what he has revealed.
The objection still sets a real limit. Pastor Michael McBride, pastor of the Wade Church in Berkeley, California, offered an example from his own background: “In my Apostolic Pentecostal tradition growing up, many of you in this room would not be saved.” The instinct that can expose a god who blesses harm can just as easily be aimed at believers who differ over lesser matters. Jude 3 Project holds that on the essentials the church speaks with one voice, while on secondary matters faithful Christians have always disagreed, and that is not a crisis. Where the line falls is itself argued over. Some traditions place baptism or church order much nearer the center than others do, and this guide cannot settle that map. It uses a narrower criterion drawn from Jeremiah 7: a faith that treats worship as a license to harm the vulnerable has left the God who spoke at the temple gate, whatever else it gets right.
Justin Giboney, president of the AND Campaign, named the trap that makes this test fail. When people frame a conflict as good against evil, he said, “One is we miss the evil within us and on our side, right?” He also warned that “your strongest beliefs can be used to manipulate you.” A god shaped to serve power rarely arrives as an obvious idol. He arrives attached to something you sincerely care about, and asks you to overlook what is done in its name.
Practice: test the God you have been preaching
Return to your page from the beginning. This takes about twenty minutes and works best in writing.
- Next to each God wants me to… statement, write who benefits if it is true and who bears the cost. Name people or groups, not abstractions.
- Read Jeremiah 7:5-6 again. For each statement, ask whether it would still hold if you were the foreigner, the orphan or the widow in that list.
- Look at your God would never ask me to… sentence. Is it something Jesus actually asks of people in Luke 6:27-38? If so, write down where.
- McBride spoke of people unwilling to sit with others “as they are bearing the weight of our decisions.” Name one person who carries the weight of a choice you have made with God’s blessing in mind. What would it look like to listen to them this month?
- Write down one time Scripture contradicted you and you changed. If you cannot find one, take that seriously. It proves nothing by itself, but it is the place to start praying and reading.
In a group, let people do this privately and share only what they choose. No one should be pressed to read their page aloud.
Questions for discussion
- In Jeremiah 7:10, the people leave worship feeling safe. What makes worship feel reassuring rather than correcting, and how could you tell the difference in your own church life?
- The two readings of Exodus 32:5 differ on what the people thought they were doing. Does that difference change the lesson, or does the verdict in verses 7-8 settle it either way?
- Daughtry moves from Genesis 1:27 to concern for food, water and safety. Is that move faithful to the text, and where might someone stretch it further than Scripture goes?
- McBride admits his own tradition once wrote off other Christians. What separates a secondary disagreement from a portrait of God that blesses harm? Try to state the line in one sentence.
- Giboney warns that strong beliefs can be used to manipulate us. Which of your convictions would be easiest for someone to exploit, and what would that look like?
- Compare Jeremiah 7:3-11 with Luke 6:46-49. What does each passage treat as the evidence of true allegiance, and where do they agree?
For anyone leading this
Keep the group on the guide’s angle. If the conversation turns to which party or candidate worships the wrong god, bring it back to the question on each person’s own page. Some participants may have been harmed by someone who used God’s name to justify it. For those harmed, this exercise is not a call to find their own fault. Believe them, do not make their experience a debate topic, and help them find trusted support. The failures of leaders are real and grievous, and they are not the failure of Christ. If anyone is facing abuse at home, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
A question to carry
Treneé McGee, a Connecticut state representative, pointed the panel to Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives who refused Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew boys. In her retelling, they said, “we are going above religious monarchy and we fear the Lord.” The text itself is plain: “But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive” (Exodus 1:17).
Their fear of God did not make them feel safe. It put them at risk before the most powerful man in their world, for the sake of children who could do nothing for them. So keep asking: when you call on God, does he ever lead you somewhere costly for someone else’s sake, or does he always seem to lead you back to where you already wanted to stand?