We have an email here from a mom named Colleen who is writing on behalf of her son, and for

the sake of anonymity of him as a minor, I'm not going to use his name here, Colleen,

his mother writes and asks this, Dear Pastor John, I am hoping you can help us with regards

to the topic of God being a megalomaniac, which is what our 15-year-old son currently believes.

We've talked about this, and he has said that you may be the only person who can change

his thinking on this.

Because of the Westminster Catechism's answer to the chief end of man, he now believes

that God is somehow weak and has an enormous ego that he created a human being so that they

will worship him, that God is too needy.

My son wants to enjoy other things more than God, and thinks that programming people to

find their greatest happiness and worshiping him is coercive, mean, manipulative, and wrong.

Pastor John, what would you say to this mom and to her son?

I don't know Colleen's son's name, but for convenience sake, I'm going to call him Joe

and speak directly to him.

According to his mom, Joe believes six things.

But she doesn't say, and if I were having a conversation with Joe, the first thing I would

ask is probably, now what are you basing your view of God on?

Are you making it up?

Are you trusting some human teacher?

Are you deducing it from nature and the logical use of nature?

Or are you basing it on God's word in Scripture?

And how he answers that question would probably affect how I answer.

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