Index > What is God? > The second day

No, God is not a dictator. Authority can flow from God, but we start as individuals creating God, choosing God, and giving ourselves to God. We only partially give ourselves to God and God's service; we want to have our own separate individual perspectives and experiences.

It's possible for God to give us commands that we should follow even if we don't understand why. But that's only by us constructing that God.

There is a tension here, but it's not incidental, it's a creative tension that's part of the real relationship between real humans and God. See "Condivergence".

Ya'akov wrestled with a man or an angel and thereby got the name "Yeesra'el" ("Israel"), which is taken to mean "struggles with El (God)". That's the right relationship between human and God. God is not our Lord, although God is the ruler of the cosmos.