The common visualisation that you refer to comes from people who are self hating and insecure with the concept of a loving father God. They just can't relate.
OK the common visualization of loving bearded father on a throne in heaven showering love upon us in return for our occasional devotion is still a limited view of what god/spirit is and what lies beyond the physical realm.
I believe in prayer, I believe in spirit and I believe in a creator. I just don't consider myself a Christian.
I do stand up for and will fight discrimination against Christians, just because the MSM and liberals seem to target them and ridicule them so. In doing so I would hope that the Christian would show the same respect to my beliefs and not insist that their words, their church and their path to God is the only true path.
I realize the Christian influence in the founding of our country, I accept it. I would never wish to ever live in any theocracy that was based on any religion, ever. I have come to the conclusion that secularism, environmentalism, liberalism, statism are all the religions of the left. Well, statism has worshipers on the right also.
The only extreme that I hold dear, is that government when it reaches a certain size becomes oppressive no matter what name it goes by. Our government was about the right size in about 1900 and that is about the level I would prefer it get rolled back to. Roads, defense of the country, the courts are about it. That is what our government should be concerned with.
Didn't mean to rant, but it just kept coming out...