God Images and Faith Maturity

God Images and Faith Maturity

Cultural God images

Whatever our belief or non-belief, we all carry around with us images of God.  These ‘pictures’ work in both our conscious mind and our unconscious therefore they go a long way to shaping attitudes, beliefs and actions.  We absorb these images through both religious and secular cultures, from family, school, media and so on.  Whatever name we give to the deity, it is always accompanied by a cluster of images and more often than not linked to authority figures.

The most powerful god images that operate in us, shaping self-image, beliefs and relationships are those that we have taken for granted or are not consciously aware of.  Therefore they are unexamined and unquestioned.

The images of God that have dropped unreflected into our minds show an anthropomorphised god who is either an angry, punitive deity, one who sends suffering for punishment or ‘character building’ or even the ‘magician’ god who bends to our will - just to name a few stereotypes around in our popular culture.  These stereotyped, concretised images either work as ego-support so that we hold onto something definite and containable that reinforces identity, or they become the reason to reject all images of God.  When these are the only images available a person either lives in a dependent, closed relationship with the deity and thereby colouring all their relationships, or in rejecting those images fail to see that they have rejected a false god.

Within the Catholic tradition, I am frequently appalled and grieved at the level of faith understanding that many good people struggle through life with.  As children, they inherited a catechesis that actually made the images of God irrelevant to their adult lives.  The teaching church has been remiss in not presenting faith education as something that needed to develop and change as people matured. 

All images inadequate

All theology is an exercise in poetics, metaphor and symbol, but we have frequently forgotten this and reduced symbol to the reality, so distorting both the symbol and the reality to which it points.  God is not an elderly, bearded man!  Neither is God just another being like us only writ large.

Ultimately, all images are inadequate to name the Mystery we call the God of Jesus; however maturity in faith demands we question those images we carry in us and hold them up to the mirror which is Jesus, Word incarnate.  In doing this we allow the symbol to break open to new meaning.  The paradox is that the more we allow our received images of God to be made conscious and considered the more we will free ourselves from destructive, binding images that lurk in our unconscious.

Even the best of our images of God will always be inadequate and even wrong to some extent.  Newman[i] said that we can only replace one erroneous image of God with another.  This is simply because we are trying to name the Mystery who is being and life itself.  There will always be a tension between God revealed in Jesus and in creation and the unfathomable mystery of God who is life itself.  Unknowing is the corrective to thinking we have comprehended or grasped the God of Jesus.

Finding more adequate images

The life of faith is not isolated from all that a person is - individually and socially and if this life of faith is to mature, it requires the exercise of both mind and heart. 

We tend to want to hold onto what is important to us, to insulate it against change.  However, in order for something to remain alive, fresh, relevant and transformative it has to be renewed from time to time.  So, with our God-images.   If the core of faith is to remain liberating for us, we, both as individuals and as church, need to hold our beliefs and in particular our God images up to the light of Scripture and the lived tradition to find new content and new ways to name the Mystery that is God and also the mystery that is humanity.  For example, fatherhood as a social construct is different in many aspects in our society from that of Jesus’ time.  Our God-language must speak to our time and culture so that the Gospel continues to confront and comfort.  The Scriptures use so many images and names for God but we have tended to limit them to a few. 

There is a passage in Terry Pratchett’s novel The Fifth Elephant[ii] which brings the need for change to keep something precious relevant.  Sir Samuel Vimes is shocked that the throne on which the dwarf king has just been enthroned upon is a fake. 

Suddenly the King was holding his mining axe again.  “This milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see.  Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade.  And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation… but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family?  And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know.  Pretty good.  Will you tell me this is a fake too?”

It is not easy to question what and how we believe because it takes courage to let go of the known to launch into the unknown; to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar; to allow new images to replace or expand familiar ones.  However, it is, in fact a glorious adventure of mind, heart and spirit.  This adventure means we have to then ask questions about our prejudices and assumptions about life, politics, justice and people as we allow the more profound and truthful God images to transform us

Prayer and knowing

While intellectual enquiry is essential to maturity of faith, it will only take us so far.  Faith is about a relationship, and like all relationships, it needs nurture so prayer is the heart of growing in maturity, understanding and love.  In prayer we allow the God images we carry to be broken open, until we are brought to a place where all images fall away and we know beyond cognition.  St. Bonaventure[iii] writes of this contemplation as driven by desire, i.e. love, ‘If this passing over is to be perfect, all intellectual operations must be given up, and the sharp point of our desire must be entirely directed towards God and transformed in him.’  And this is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 We take into prayer our personal lives, our beliefs, our culture, the totality of who we are and allow who we are to abide in the presence of the Mystery who is the source of all being.  In this we open ourselves to be changed and converted from the always inadequate god of our imaginings.  God is always and everywhere awaiting our coming, our attention, our love in order to draw us into this relational mystery.

There is an important dictum:  We become what we contemplate.  So allowing ourselves to be open to God is to become more like God of Jesus and thereby more profoundly human, after all, humanity created and redeemed, is the icon of God.  However, this humanness will always, to some extent be somewhat out of step with the culture in which we live.

There are three things we need to do in order to pray well:  One is to be present to God in absolute honesty - as honest as we are able to be at a particular time.  God can take it!  The Scriptures teach us that God loves our honesty.  Secondly, we need to very gently, kindly and firmly put ego aside for a while and allow ourselves to be curious, vulnerable, surprised, unsure and above all directed to the ‘Other’.  Finally, we need to learn to listen, attentively, humbly, fully. 

In this way, our limited God images slowly, like a good marinade, soften, break open, change and we open our heart and mind to Reality which we name Trinitarian.  By the way, these three points are good for human communications also.

To pray with an open heart and mind, with honesty and surrender will take so from the limited, unreflected upon images of God that lurk in our minds and hearts and influence how we live our lives and how we live with each other.  It is called conversion.

The Book of Job

Like all good literature, the story of Job has many layers, one of the threads is the story of Job’s ‘conversion’.  Job was faithful, upright and wealthy.  He lost his wealth and his children.  Job’s friends who came to comfort him spoke long and piously about God’s will, while Job rants and laments - ‘Perish the day I was born’ (Job 3:3).  He calls God to account.  For most of the book God is silent.  Then He speaks to Job, not answering Job’s questions but simply and humorously taking him on a journey through creation and rebukes the well-meaning friends for ‘not speaking rightly of me’ (Job 42:7).  Job surrenders - he has encountered God as he never knew him before. ‘I heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you.’ (Job 42:5)

Job’s story could well be a paradigm for our own growing maturity into the Mystery who envelops us and delights in us and who prays in us.

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[i] John Henry Newman, The theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and certainty, ed. J.D. Holmes (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976) p. 102

[ii] Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant, (London, Corgi Books, 2000) p. 405

[iii] St. Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, tr. Ewart Cousins (New York, Paulist Press 1978) p. 113

Photo courtesy of Beverley Anne Jansen