Different metaphors for God make for very different spiritual journeys. It is an axiom that we become like the god we worship. Worship an angry god; you become angry. Worship a punitive god, you become punitive. Worship a hypocritical god – one who says “love, love love,” but gets his revenge in the end with a sword… and we become hypocritical.
“Imagination” Artist Bill Mack
LINK >>
So it matters how we imagine God. It matters a lot.
Some of my good Christian friends bristle at the idea of “imagining” God. They feel that our scriptures and tradition give us such a clear picture of the ways of God, that there is little left to imagine. “Revelation” is the word they prefer; God’s nature has been revealed to us, God’s attributes have been revealed to us.
But that is not the testimony of our tradition. Our tradition has always insisted that God is bigger than can be contained in any thought or image. “Transcendent “is the word we have used. No image, no principle, no attribute we imagine… is big enough to contain the Divine.
But notwithstanding this core principle of our faith, our Christian journey has been one long exercise in trying to reduce the irreducible. Since the introduction of Medieval Scholasticism and Enlightenment Rationalism were inserted into our tradition, we’ve been on a tear to figure out, and pin down, God.
I’ve got a book left over from graduate school called Systematic Theology. In it, there is a section titled “The Attributes of God.” Chapter after chapter, the author leads us on an exercise in pinning down the un-pin-down-able, insisting that God is this way, and is not that way.And this would be fine…
Except that our images of God are so powerfully deterministic in how we live.
And we Christians haven’t been living all that well this last generation or two.
metaphors for God from the Psalms
thanks to Dale Ridge Community Church
It is a basic tenet of our faith that all we have to talk about God are metaphors. No image we can hold in our brains or speak with our words can contain the expansiveness of God. Consequently, all religious thought and dialogue is a struggle with vocabulary, a struggle to frame partial-truth images that help us make meaning of our experience of the Divine.
That being the case, when one of our images stops serving us well, it has always been our way to cast about to find better, partial images.
So, in this series of posts, I’ll be suggesting it’s time to update our god-images; time to trade our god in for a new one. It’s a scary proposition for us religious folks, but it is the only way to navigate times of seismic upheaval like the one we’re currently experiencing
Doug, thanks for letting us be a part of this journey. This blog entry is the first I’ve read. I have a lot to catchup on. This one is a real tickler for people like us who are already looking and have experienced a little about transcendence. It sounds like it will provide some history , insight, and organization to our emerging journeys. I can;t wait to read the rest. You have the experience and gift of presenting in perspective things many of us can’t verbalize or only have intuitive wisps of. If I put myself back where I was a year ago, I would not be ready for this. I would glance at it and move on, thinking it was one of the more intelligently written approaches, but I’m wondering if there would be enough to tickle who I was then so that I would recognize it as different than all the other stuff that seems new and strange. Maybe some of that happens in other posts. But that’s me…who I was. Who knows who you might touch and lead along?
Doug, thanks for letting us be a part of this journey. This blog entry is the first I’ve read. I have a lot to catchup on. This one is a real tickler for people like us who are already looking and have experienced a little about transcendence. It sounds like it will provide some history , insight, and organization to our emerging journeys. I can;t wait to read the rest. You have the experience and gift of presenting in perspective things many of us can’t verbalize or only have intuitive wisps of. If I put myself back where I was a year ago, I would not be ready for this. I would glance at it and move on, thinking it was one of the more intelligently written approaches, but I’m wondering if there would be enough to tickle who I was then so that I would recognize it as different than all the other stuff that seems new and strange. Maybe some of that happens in other posts. But that’s me…who I was. Who knows who you might touch and lead along?
thank you robert… and welcome!
d.
I assume these are outline ideas, and that when you get ready to publish that you will provide background to what Medieval Scholasticism and Enlightenment Rationalism are, rather than referring us to Wikipedia.
wikipedia gets a lot of grief for it’s open-source format. i, however, find it very helpful for quick, down-and-dirty, understanding of major historical concepts.
if this flow of thought were to make it into a book, i’d probably expand scholasticism and rationalism, but i really wanted to just point out that these major philosophical influences shape how we have come to be christian.
d.
Interesting how sometimes the same folks telling us not to try to imagine God.. are the same type who write books such as Systematic Theology.
Since we tend to reflect the God we imagine or believe, I think it very important we have some idea about Him, who He is. Angry & vengeful we live a very different way from seeing a loving, forgiving Lord. Believing in a loving God.. helps us show that love to folks around me. And we look for the love in others.
I don’t so much care for the “picture” of God as the “feel” of God.
I think God is every where, every thing, more the air we breath, the creator, the power or force..?.. that keeps everything possible.. Un-understandable, but “there” felt..