When people tell me that they don’t believe in God, I sometimes ask them if they would mind telling me why. It often turns out that what they don’t believe in is a sort of powerful, controlling being. I am not surprised that they don’t believe in someone like that. I don’t either.

As a Christian, I can hardly blame people for thinking that Christians regard God as an old bloke in the sky. And however much Christians insist that this is not how we view God, we can easily slip back into imagining God as some sort of patriarchal tyrant glowering down at us.

You might have sung the Christmas carol Away in a Manger. In one of the worst lines ever to appear in a Christian song, the carol declares, “I love thee, love Jesus, look down from the sky”.

Jesus is not in the sky. But this carol has given generations of children and adults the idea that Christians believe that Jesus – and God – is up there, away from us, in the sky. But Jesus reveals a God who is accessible to us here and now, in the messiness of everyday life on Earth.

Okay, it’s not just Away in a Manger that’s to blame. Michelangelo painted a picture of an old man with a beard on the Sistine Ceiling. He did not intend to suggest that God the Father literally looks like that, but he gave countless millions of people the idea that that’s the way we should think about God.

But this is not the God proclaimed by Jesus Christ. Part of the problem is that we are so constrained by our human limitations that when we think of power we think of human power. When we think of something beyond ourselves we imagine a big all-seeing human-type being.

But God is not a being. God is being itself. God is loving and just. But God is more than that. God is love itself. God is justice itself. Therefore wherever love and justice are present, God is present. There can be no love without God.

If you’re asking, “Do I believe in God?”, the question is not “Do I believe in a powerful scary bloke in the sky?” Whether or not you do, I certainly don’t (and I doubt that I would worship him if I did).

Instead, the question is “Do I believe in the power of love?” Beyond this, “Is the power of love greater than other powers in the world?” and “Does the power of love exist objectively over and above the other powers and beings in the world?”

As a Christian, I believe that the power of love is more than a passing feeling.

I believe that the power of love exists, and will exist, whatever happens to other powers and beings in the world. I call that power “God”.

The good news that Christians proclaim is that in Christ the power of love will triumph, and has already triumphed, over the other powers of the world.

You may find this difficult to believe. But if you want to explore the truth or otherwise of Christian faith, then this is a better starting-point than images of despotic men in the sky. I will go into more detail in another post very soon.

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.