Images of God - Then and Now

Introduction

We stand firm in the biblical tradition that “it ain’t over until its over.” That is especially true in terms of God’s call. ElderCall is a column that embodies that truth. Each issue a different FAW friend will reflect on the theme and their own sense of call.

There’s a wonderful little book by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn entitled Good Goats – Healing Our Image of God. God is described as something like “good old Uncle George” whom we, along with our parents, visit every Sunday. Uncle George has white hair, a long white beard, and a stern look with which he drills us as he tells us how much he loves us. Then he gives us a glimpse of a basement filled with a fiery blast furnace and screaming voices. This, he admonishes, is where we’ll end up if we fail to love him as we’re instructed to do. So we assure him of our love, all the while secretly loathing the monster. Sadly, as we mature we become more and more like Uncle George. This is the image of God with which I was reared, in a church that taught a very literal fear of God’s wrath. I was good because I was afraid to be bad. I was eighteen before I lost my fear of hell and began slowly, slowly to trust that God was something or someone other than my early fear filled image.

By the time I was thirty I’d begun discovering grace, and along with that my image of God began to change, although he was still male and authoritarian, an inhabitant of Heaven. My beliefs were well defined and I was secure in them. I had an Old Testament theology – be good and God will reward you, both here and in the hereafter.

I became a parent, and as my children grew into very different individuals I began to understand God in a different way. Here are some things I’ve learned that have given me clues about the nature of God:

• I love my children for one reason – they are mine!

• They are my treasure, my joy.

• When they did self-destructive things, I grieved. I didn’t try to fix them; I knew I couldn’t, that only they could choose to change. • I watched them take risks and encouraged their efforts, applauded their successes, and listened (as much as I was able) when they failed.

• Never have I loved them “in spite of themselves” or “bad as they are.” I have loved them through it all, even when they were angry with me and seemed not to love me, because they are always and irrevocably mine. I would grieve if they came to me, hat in hand, praying to me in some of the ways Christians are taught to pray. One Bible verse stands out in particular: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit,” which I’d accepted without question as “don’t make God mad.” What we mistake for anger is, I believe, God’s grief at the ways we manage to muddle up our lives and our world.

There are now only a few things about God of which I’m certain. God is absolute compassion. God is absolutely for every human person and the earth we inhabit. God is Spirit, transcending anything we can fathom and in that transcendence living within me, affirming my worth. These certainties inform the way I live. They inform my faith and my politics as well as my everyday interactions. Because I am loved like this, I am able to love.

My vision of God has become as broad and deep as this magnificent, incredible universe we inhabit. There’s so much we don’t know, even as we learn more and more, that it would be deadening to limit God to that which we “know.” Yet that which we know is enough to fill generations with awe and wonder and the will to act according to that Will.

God is no longer a Being in whom I believe but an experience of Mystery, giving me new eyes, a new heart of compassion, a hunger for the fulfilling of God’s dream of peace and justice spoken of by Old Testament prophets, the peace and justice that Jesus said he came to bring. My hope is to be a tiny spark of that peace, justice, compassion and inclusive love in this broken world for the remainder of my days, wherever my journey leads me.