A challenge

John faithfully portrays a facet of God that many find distasteful, a facet that, though reflected throughout the Scriptures of both testaments, many exclude from the image of the God they worship. Nevertheless, John's proclamation challenges us to ask, if we are to worship the God known in the whole counsel of Scripture, whether we might stand in need of recovering a reasonable fear of God, a healthy respect for God's justice and God's power that will keep a fire kindled within us to get in line with God's agenda sooner rather than later, more rather than less, to the degree that God merits rather than to the degree we can comfortably accommodate. John's emphasis on judgment—and that primarily in terms of what we have done rather than what we have believed—challenges us to examine whether we are really hearing and heeding the words of Jesus when he said, “What's the use of calling me 'Lord' if you don't do what I tell you?”— Unholy Allegiances, page 124

<idle musing>
Ouch. I would sometimes prefer the comfortable God over the real one...but that's not what God calls us to. He demands all of us that we might know all of him.

When I stop to think about it, we're getting the better end of the deal! Of course, if you have a distorted view of who God is (and we all do to an extent), then you might not realize you're getting the better end of the deal...
</idle musing>