Taking a page from J.B. Phillips’s Your God Is Too Small, Ulrich L. Lehner pushes back the warm commercial holiday blanket to argue the living God is not Santa.

Why do I find the nice view of God not only unsatisfying, but also politically and morally dangerous? A nice God props up the status quo. Whatever you do, there is no failure because God is on your side. The nice God plays to our narcissism. Since whatever I feel is right, and good feelings are from God, I am always justified without recourse to tradition or reason.