Father Richard explores how we often create God in our image, rather than the other way around.
It takes a long time for us to allow God to be who God really is. Our natural egocentricity wants to make God into who we want God to be. The role of prophets and good theology is to keep people free for God and to keep God free for people. While there are some “pure of heart” people (Matthew 5:8) who come to “see God” naturally and easily, most of us need lots of help.
If God is always Mystery, then God is always in some way the unfamiliar, beyond what we’re used to, beyond our comfort zone, beyond what we can explain or understand. In the fourth century, St. Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” [1] Could we truly respect a God we could comprehend? And yet, very often we want a God who reflects and even confirms our culture, our biases, our economic, political, and security systems.
The First Commandment (Exodus 20:2–5) says that we’re not supposed to make any graven images of God or worship them. At first glance, we may think this means only handmade likenesses of God, but it mostly refers to rigid images of God that we hold in our heads. God created human beings in God’s own image, and we’ve returned the compliment, so to speak, by creating God in our image! In the end, we produced what was typically a small, clannish God. In the United States, God looks like Uncle Sam or Santa Claus, an exacting judge, or a win/lose businessman—in each case, a white male, even though “God created humankind in God’s own image; male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:27). Clearly God cannot be exclusively masculine. The Trinitarian God is anything but a ruling monarch or a solitary figurehead.
Normally we find it very difficult to let God be greater than our culture, our immediate needs, and our projections. The human ego wants to keep things firmly in its grasp; so, we’ve created a God who fits into our small systems and our understanding of God. Thus, we’ve produced a God who requires expensive churches and robes, a God who likes to go to war just as much as we do, and a domineering God because we like to dominate. We’ve almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus revealed about the nature of the God he knew. If Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) then God is nothing like we expected. Jesus is in no sense a potentate or a patriarch, but the very opposite, one whom John the Baptist calls “the lamb of God” (John 1:29). We seem to prefer a lion. =======
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| DEC 10, 2024 The Idol of Tradition: An Excuse for Disobedience |
 Click Here for AudioCan you imagine having an unmediated encounter with the Creator of the universe who commands you to do something, but you say “No” to him? Remarkably, this happens several times in the Bible. What could cause a person to say no directly to God in a miraculous moment of divine self-revelation? Moses said no when God told him to confront Pharaoh because he felt inadequate. Jonah said no when God told him to go to Nineveh because he knew God would be merciful to his enemies there. And Peter said no when God told him to eat something that violated his strict kosher diet. For Moses the issue was his fear, for Jonah it was his pride, and for Peter it was his tradition. Most of us recognize the way fear and pride may disrupt our obedience to God, but fewer see the dangers of tradition. The strict dietary laws in the Old Testament had a pragmatic function. They were a means of keeping Israel separate from the pagan societies surrounding it. After all, if you do not share the same diet, you will not share the same table. If you do not share the same table, you will not develop close relationships. If you do not develop close relationships, you will not intermarry. And if you do not intermarry you will not abandon your own religion to adopt the beliefs of your non-Israelite relatives. So, the Torah’s dietary tradition was meant to keep God’s people dedicated to him, holy and separate. By the time of Peter, however, the dietary tradition had become an end in itself. In Acts 10, the Lord called Peter to abandon his Jewish dietary tradition in order to fully welcome non-Jews as followers of Jesus and as his brothers and sisters in God’s kingdom, but Peter refused. The Jewish dietary tradition, whose purpose had been to ensure obedience to God, was instead used by Peter as a reason to disobey God. Peter’s tradition had become an idol. The complicated dynamic between Old Testament traditions and New Testament faith is one that we must wrestle with, as Peter did. On one hand, we ought to honor traditions as valuable and important. They often help us deepen and maintain our communion with God. On the other hand, we must discern when a tradition is no longer serving its intended purpose; when it is interfering with rather than advancing faithfulness. Like all of God’s good gifts, traditions must never become more important than God himself. DAILY SCRIPTURE ACTS 10:1–48 WEEKLY PRAYER. A Gaelic prayer God guide me with your wisdom, God chastise me with your justice, God help me with your mercy, God protect me with your strength, God shield me with your shade, God fill me with your grace, For the sake of your anointed Son. Amen. |
