It is to be expected, then, that the child's earliest concepts of God
will be faulty and incomplete, and that in many points they will later
need correction. Probably most children first think of God as having
human form and attributes; the idea of spirit is beyond their grasp. God
is to them a kind of magnified and glorified Father after the type of
their earthly father. This need not concern us if we make sure that the
crude beginnings of the God-idea have no disturbing elements in them,
and that as the concept grows it moves in the right direction.

The harm from false concepts.--Mr. H.G. Wells[2] bitterly complains
against the wrong concept of God that was allowed to grow in his mind as
a child. These are his words: "He and his hell were the nightmare of my
childhood.... I thought of him as a fantastic monster perpetually
waiting to condemn and to strike me dead!... He was over me and about my
silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child
drowning in mid-Atlantic." It was only as the child grew into youth, and
was able to discard this false idea of God that he came to feel right
toward him.

[2] God the Invisible King, p. 44.

The harm done a child by false and disturbing concepts of God is hard to
estimate. A small boy recently came home from Sunday school and confided
to his mother that he "didn't think it was fair for God to spy on a
fellow!" A sympathetic inquiry by the mother revealed the fact that the
impression brought from the lesson hour was of God keeping a lookout for
our wrongdoings and sins, and constantly making a record of them against
us, as an unsympathetic teacher might in school. The beneficent and
watchful oversight and care of God had not entered into the concept.