Letting Our Images Mature
Father Richard Rohr invites us to consider our images of God and how they shape us:
Our image of God creates us—or defeats us. There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. The word “God” is a stand-in word for everything—Reality, truth, and the very shape of our universe. This is why good theology and spirituality can make such a major difference in how we live our daily lives in this world. God is Reality with a Face—which is the only way most humans know how to relate to anything. There has to be a face!
After years of giving and receiving spiritual direction, it has become clear to me and to many of my colleagues that most people’s operative image of God is initially a subtle combination of their mom and dad, or other early authority figures. Without an interior journey of prayer or inner experience, much of religion is largely childhood conditioning, which God surely understands and uses. Yet atheists, agnostics, and many former Christians rightly react against this because such religion is so childish and often fear-based, and so they argue against a caricature of faith. I would not believe in that god myself!
Our goal, of course, is to grow toward an adult religion that includes reason, faith, and inner experience we can trust. A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people. A punitive God creates punitive people.
If our mothers were punitive, our God is usually punitive too. We will then spend much of our lives submitting to that punitive God or angrily reacting against it. If our father figures were cold and withdrawn, we will assume that God is cold and withdrawn too—all Scriptures, Jesus, and mystics to the contrary. If all authority in our lives came through men, we probably assume and even prefer a male image of God, even if our hearts desire otherwise. As we were taught in Scholastic philosophy, “Whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver.” [1] This is one of those things hidden in plain sight, but it still remains well-hidden to most Christians.
All of this is mirrored in political worldviews as well. Good theology makes for good politics and positive social relationships. Bad theology makes for stingy politics, a largely reward/punishment frame, xenophobia, and highly controlled relationships.
For me, as a Christian, the still underdeveloped image of God as Trinity is the way out and the way through all limited concepts of God. Jesus comes to invite us into an Infinite and Eternal Flow of Perfect Love between Three—which flows only in one, entirely positive direction. There is no “backsplash” in the Trinity but only Infinite Outpouring—which is the entire universe. Yet even here we needed to give each of the three a placeholder name, a “face,” and a personality.
In the Beginning
Pastor and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality Victoria Loorz considers the origins of our traditional images of God:
God as the Patriarch. Christ as the Lord. God as the King. Christ as the One and Only Word. These are all metaphors or images created by people (well, men) at particular times in history to define relationship with sacred reality. These are metaphors that made sense to people who were ruled by violent, imperial monarchs—people who depended on the whims of lords and property owners for their survival. These metaphors also conveniently helped those in charge to legitimate and enforce their power.
Ecotheologian Sallie McFague calls on us to construct new images and metaphors that are relevant to our lives and time in history. For us, living in this century, metaphors for God must somehow experiment with metaphors other than the royalist, triumphalist images, which are clearly inappropriate. They must, she insists, express the ecological interdependencies of life. [1]
Loorz reflects on an image of God inspired by John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word.”
I offer another relevant metaphor for our time, yet rooted in a forgotten tradition: Christ as Conversation. Christ as Conversation says to me that the oak tree and that deer in the meadow are not God. And I’m not God. But we [each] carry the Christ, the Logos, the Tao, the spark of divine love within us. And the conversation between us: that is the manifestation of the sacred, moving forward the evolving kin-dom of grace. The wild Christ….
Jesus as the Christ embodies that in-between presence between the Creator and the created. Between the transcendent and the incarnated. But not just Jesus. All of us. Even the trees and the microbes and the stars are made and imbued with and held together by Conversation. Christ is dynamic, abundant relationship, a cacophony of interrelated connections navigated by conversation. Christ is the opposite, in fact, of a static word, a single utterance controlled by powerful men….
What would a wild Christ—a Conversation who is the intermediary of love between all things, whose divine presence connects wild deer with my own wild soul—evoke in our world? Is it possible to imagine the worldview of kingdoms and empires transforming into a worldview of kin-dom and compassion? Imagine how different life would be right now if Christianity could become a place for sacred conversation: a place to explore possibilities and express doubts and disagree and encourage voices on the edges. Imagine the church honoring sacred conversation by lifting up the voices shut down by empire. Imagine the reconciling role the church could offer in bringing together opposite forces to remember that we are all interconnected.
| Quote of the Week: “I pray, therefore, God rid me of God.” – Sermon 52 Reflection: On the surface, it looks as though Meister Eckhart is espousing atheism. However, just as many of these Christian mystics, wisdom is found just past the surface readings we sometimes give them. Eckhart was a master at taking people right up to the edge of their understanding and inviting people to take the next step into wonder. As the department chair of theology at the University of Paris, was no stranger to mystery. We could say that in his day and age, church teaching was more comfortable with mystery than we are today in our post-enlightenment world. Eckhart was keenly aware of the limitations of human language to define God. This was so much the case that Eckhart even asked if the word “God” was even close enough to the reality of God for us to even warrant using it. Eckhart regularly reminded his congregation that God was beyond every thought or idea we could have about God. And how could he not? Especially when God is absolutely beyond anything we could say about Him? And so here is the paradox: Every possible thought or idea we could have about God is inherently limited, and therefore idolatrous if we cling to it too tightly. Yet, we cannot help but at least try to use words to understand this mystery we call “God.” Which brings us back to the main quote this week. It may only be an act of God that is capable of separating us from clinging to thoughts, ideas, concepts, and vocabulary about God. It is a paradox, for certain, but there is a deep truth to the fact that as soon as we let go of our conceptual boxes of what and who God is, we are then most able to accept the reality and personhood of this mystery that we call, “God.” Prayer Good God, we are fully aware that our thoughts, ideas, concepts, and even vocabulary fall short of the glory and the mystery of You. Come to us and eliminate every idolatrous understanding we have of You and help us to bend the knee at the infinite mystery of You. Guide our steps and light our paths for us, so that we might always be willing to follow a little further into who You truly are. And, if you see fit, grant us the courage to not cling to a small but familiar understanding of You for longer than we ought. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen and amen. |
| Life Overview of Meister Eckhart: Who Were They: Eckhart von Hochheim, later to be known as Meister Eckhart, OP (Order of Preachers aka Dominicans). Where: Born near Gotha, Landgraviate of Thuringia (now Germany). Died in Avignon, Kingdom of Arles (now France). When: 1260-1328AD Why He is Important: Without a doubt, Meister Eckhart was misunderstood in his day and age. He was almost excommunicated but that was largely due to the Inquisition not being able to understand the complexity and paradox of his teaching. Over time, he has come to be known as an impressive figure of theology and spirituality. What Was Their Main Contribution: Meister Eckhart is most known for being a Dominican monk who understood the Christian faith with “an eastern mind.” He often taught through paradox and what has come to be known as “non-dual” thinking (rising above either/or conceptualizations). Books to Check Out: Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations of the Restless Soul Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to the God Within by Joel Harrington Meister Eckhart, from Whom God Hid Nothing: Sermons, Writings and Sayings |
