Imaging God

From a 2007 weekly reflection paper I wrote for an introductory course in spiritual direction --

All of these readings on imaging God were wonderful, but I especially appreciate the Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon Au selections from The Discerning Heart. Their consideration of how our our images of God affect our entire approach to life, relationships, and the sacred journey, as well as the impact of developmental influences and the need for balance between immanent and transcendent images of God -- really hit home for me.

It is painful to observe the effect that distorted images of God can have. I know quite a few people who have a deep--and quite justified--resentment toward "God" and [panen]theistic religion because they've acquired an image of an angry, vengeful deity who is ready to send people to eternal hell if they are unpleasing to him. I rejected the existence of God in my teens because it did not make sense to me that an all-powerful, "all-loving" Creator would bring humans into being only to damn them to unending torment if they did not accept Jesus as Lord. If this were the case, most of humanity would end up in the place of infinite torment, and the cosmos would be an essentially cruel place. Why create sentient life in the first place if most of it ends up in never-ending torture? I wondered. Is God simply a sadist? [An aside -- Richard Rohr once mused that " ...Most people I know would never torture another human being under any conditions. Yet people believe in a god who not only tortures, but tortures for all eternity. That is bitter vengeance by anyone's definition. Why would anyone want to be alone with such a testy and temperamental god? Why would anyone go on the great mystical journey into divine intimacy with such an unsafe lover? Why would anyone trust such a god to know how to love those who really need it?  I personally know many people who are much more generous and imaginative than this god is. We have ended up being ourselves more loving, or at least trying to be, than the god we profess to believe! Such a religion is in deep trouble - at its core . . ."]

So I concluded that "God" was a human-created myth intended to frighten people into being good, and that there was no true God. In rejecting this distorted image of God, I (for a time, at least), rejected all notions of God, because I assumed that they were pointing to this narrow, vengeful, fire-and-brimstone deity. While I think it's a healthy step to reject distorted images of the Divine, it's also unfortunate when people become alienated from the riches of a tradition because the inoperable God-images got in the way.

Conversely, many people unwittingly cling to a distorted image of God in a way that may keep them "stuck" at a certain level on the spiritual journey. I think of a friend who was raised by abusive parents, and who seems to believe that God is sending her harsh trials and tests that she must "pass" if she wants to avoid punishment. It's painful to see her struggle with this -- I think she recognizes that she is operating out of a skewed view of God, yet she's also unconsciously motivated by that view . . .

In the section  . . . about professed and operative images of God, Au notes that "Sometimes the image we verbally profess is not really the image that holds sway." This gives me plenty to ponder as I examine my own God-images. On the one hand, I profess a kind of multi-perspectival, kaleidoscopic image of God: I relate to God as the ground of being, as the cosmic Source, as a tenderly embracing Mother and Father, as a deeply loving Thou, as the hidden holiness within everything, as the agapic connecting link between all beings, as incarnate love-in-action, merciful and infinitely patient, as great Silence, and as incomprehensible Mystery. Yet when I consider my own early development, I recognize that I am probably still living with some distorted images. If the object relations theorists are correct that "one's God-image, as well as one's image of self and others [is connected] to the infant's earliest interaction with its primary caregiver," then a buried part of me may see God as alternately rejecting and loving--and therefore as somewhat untrustworthy. I was given up at birth, after which I lived in a home for infants for fourteen months prior to my adoption. Such homes no longer exist, as psychologists came to see that many infants did not fare well in institutional settings and that more individualized foster-care situations were the better route. At any rate, I do not know what kind of care I received -- it may have actually been quite good, given the circumstances. But I also may have been impacted by the initial separation from my birth mother, which was followed up a little more than a year later by a separation from the caregivers in the home. Being pre-rational and pre-verbal, there was no way I could have understood the "reason" for these separations, and I probably experienced them as a profound rejection and a loss of security and love, even though none of that was intended. I recognize that there is a part of me that still perceives God as a bit indifferent -- which in turn leads to the thought that I am someone who doesn't really matter much, and that whatever I have to offer -- even my very being itself -- may be rejected or persistently ignored. That may be what under-girds this lingering need to seek "approval" from God and from others, as if I need to earn the love that S/he would never hold back.

--written on October 3, 2007