Images of God

There are so many things to write about that I hardly know where to begin. Political, economic, social, and religious controversies abound. But for today, instead of getting caught up in one controversy or another, I want to write about a fundamental perspective that may affect how we view all of the above issues. I am thinking about how we imagine God to be.

Of course, because God is beyond all direct knowing by humans (my assumption, anyway), human experience and imagination generates a myriad of images. In Healthy Liberal Christianity, we consistently remind ourselves not to confuse our images with the realities they attempt to describe. Still, our images are moving and profound, and they do affect how we see things.

For example, some divine images are associated more with “theism” or “deism”. Oh, you don’t know the difference? Well, theism sees God as having something like a human personality (although necessarily bigger and better) and that personal God shows caring by being involved in human affairs. This God heals, chastises, teaches, and intervenes, often in response to human requests (prayers). Deism posits a God who created the universe, who set it into motion, and then who went on vacation. The deist God is sometimes referred to as “the divine clockmaker” who builds the clock, winds it up, and then stands back to let it run.

There are other divine images that are less person-based and might include “life itself”, or “love”, or “energy”, etc.

Thinking about the theist images for a moment, I have noticed that images can mature and change over time. Let me give you a few examples. Many people believe in “The Santa Claus God.” You know, the one who is “making a list, checking it twice, going to find out who’s naughty and nice.” This is the God who is most interested in whether or not we are behaving ourselves and who will reward “niceness” and punish “naughtiness.”

Others believe in the image of God that I call “the genie in the lamp.” This is the God who intervenes in human affairs on request (or perhaps on demand). We “rub the lamp” by our religious rituals and prayers, the divine genie pops out, does the requested tasks, and then returns to the lamp until needed again.

In my counseling practice, I have anguished with the confusion that many of my abused clients have carried for years about why God didn’t intervene to rescue them from their abusive experiences. They sometimes wonder if the Santa Claus God was punishing them for their naughtiness, or why the Genie refused to come out of the lamp to work in their behalf. With only those images to draw from, then the ongoing abuse must mean either that the victim is being punished or that God is somehow unable or unwilling to help. These are terrible prospects.

So, it becomes necessary to identify yet another image of God. I call this one “The God of Presence.” The God of Presence neither punishes nor rescues. This image of God shows caring by being intimately present throughout human experience – including the best and the worst. God’s presence is more than companionship. It’s more like God experiences every bit of human experience along with us and brings divine meaning to it. No matter what we go through, we are never left alone.

Is it really possible for God to be God without having to intervene in order to show caring? This is a much debated point between conservative and liberal positions, but I don’t think there is any way to declare a clear winner in either direction. We must, instead, remember that all images of God are inadequate, whether creator, clockmaker, parent, judge, or any other image. Still the imagination continues to generate divine images. For example, one possible image of God is creation itself, including its embedded evolutionary process. From this perspective, creation is not completed, nor has God ceased speaking to creation (“God is still speaking”). Perhaps, then, our task of co-creation is to mature into divine fullness – beyond our prejudices, beyond our fear-based reactivity, and beyond our attempts to measure human acceptability by means of obedience. Perhaps we have the capacity to develop a richer and deeper ethical foundation for our communities and our relationships. Perhaps, as Jesus intimated, we have the capacity (and the responsibility?) to become more godlike in our Evolutionary Process. Perhaps we will discover that the divine maturation process in creation is actually indistinguishable from evolution.

For now, it simply feels right to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep healing – in short to keep evolving.

Blessings on our divine journey.

Wayne