Week 5: Rethinking God (part 1)
As we are working toward a better telling of the Christian Story, let’s start at the beginning, and rethink our understanding of God. In this section, we’ll ask ourselves what comes to our minds when we use the word “God.”
Before we begin, however, some background thinking…
When I was in seminary, I bought a Systematic Theology book at a garage sale (just in case). Part I of the book is called The Doctrine of God. Under that section, there is a sub-section titled “God is Immutable” (meaning God never changes). ”God is perfect,” the book says, “and since change is always change for the better or for the worse, God has no need of change.”
Now, as doctrines go, this seems a fine one to me. Whatever the Divine is, it says, it embodies all that is Good, all that is True, all that is Life, all that is Love. Since the Divine is doing just fine at being the essence of all these virtues, it doesn’t need to get any better at them, and it’s not getting any worse at them. So, OK, I buy the doctrine. God doesn’t need to change. We can think of God as Immutable, Unchanging.
However, I’ve seen this doctrine go bad when it bleeds over into how we think about our concept of God. We can easily begin to believe that what we believe about God needs never change.
It is one thing to say that whatever the Divine is, it has no need to change. It is something altogether different to be so convinced of our own concept of God — what we learned in our doctrine books, what we learned in Bible class, what we learned about God at our parent’s knee — that we believe that view of God need never change.
The fact is that in our tradition, our view of God has been in continuous flux. The human idea of God has meant many, very different things over the 4000 years since Abraham. There has been such dramatic difference in the concept of God from generation to generation, that one would be meaningless to the other. There is no unchanging, objective, meaning for the word “God.” It is fluid throughout history, always shifting, always changing, some of these competing concepts being very much at odds with one another.
Those who compiled the Hebrew scriptures drew from four main sources in their work. These sources were called J, E, D, and P, for Jehovah, Elohim, Deuteronomic, and Priestly. Each of these sources had a very different understanding of God. Sometimes, as in the Creation account, these sources aren’t integrated at all, but simply loaded in side-by-side. Genesis 1 tells the creation story as a poem from the P view of God, while Genesis 2-3 tells the same story from the J perspective.
Our Judeo-Christian tradition has been very pragmatic about these different views of God through the years. It has been more important that our view of God be helpful than that it be consistent. Whenever our spiritual ancestors found a particular concept of God to be unhelpful, they simply abandoned it and replaced with another, more helpful one. This has made the concept of God quite flexible over the years. If it had not been, it would never have survived. This flexibility in our tradition has helped the concept of God not only survive over the years, but thrive as one of humanity’s best ideas.
Like us, throughout history, men and women have experienced that which is beyond themselves. When they did, they used the word “God” to describe their experience, and they formulated specific images to help them think about God.
Our ancestors were at their best through the years, when they acknowledged that their current concept of God was provisional at best.
In the Hebrew tradition, we were not even allowed to speak the word for God. It was stripped of vowels so it could not be pronounced. ”Don’t be deceived,” our ancestors were telling us, “into believing we know what the ‘God’ concept is all about.” ”Don’t think we can contain the concept of God. No, it is simply too big for us.”
With a few Renaissance exceptions, our Christian tradition has generally heeded the Hebrew injunction not to create pictures or statues of God (graven images). In the wisdom of the ages, we were again being warned not to hold the concept of God with too much certainty, but to leave it in the realm of the Unknowable Unknown.
So…
When you and I formulate an idea in our heads that says “God is kind of like this,” there is one thing we know about our formulation. It is wrong.
Even those images of God we cherish… are wrong.
God is our Father. Inadequate.
God is our Bridegroom/Lover. Incomplete.
God is the feminine wisdom Sophia, as articulated in Proverbs. Again, insufficient.
These can be helpful formulations from time to time, but they do not depict the Divine with any kind of comprehensiveness or accuracy.
And from time to time, our views of God stop fitting. Like a constrictive or scratchy old coat, they begin to bother us. The patriarchal overtones of a masculine God becomes ill-fitting. The overtones of condemnation of the Judge-God image doesn’t make sense any more.
We have a strong tradition, when this happens, of discarding our old and scratchy views of God, and formulating new ones. We cannot be too married to our concepts of God. Again, they are provisional and temporary, helpful for a season, even life-altering and transformative at times. However, as their usefulness fades, we need to formulate new understandings of the Infinite Divine.
In our tradition, we’ve always had permission to speculate and create new, more helpful images of God, but somehow in conservative Christian circles, we’ve lost that permission.
I believe our society is in a time of upheaval not seen since the Enlightenment. If ever there was a time we needed permission to reframe our images of God, this is one.
In the weeks ahead, as we’re “Rethinking God,” we’ll work to get back that permission, and suggest some new ways of framing God in our minds.
Next time.
Tags: changing, God, humility, transcendent, unchanging
February 11th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Unfortunately, I have not been able to get to meditation on Wednesday evenings. This series of blogs have been fascinating to read, have you considered having separate get togethers to discuss more fully? Lately I have been wondering about the differences between positive thoughts and prayer. Sending positive thoughts about someone, some event or other issue seems almost the same as prayer to me at this time. I have been humbled both by circumstances, my own “faults” and am constantly amazed at the outpouring of love by my community both in thought and deed. Is this the answer to prayers or positve thoughts? Or is it just the practice of God is love that we should all try to emulate?
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February 11th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
I really appreciated this topic. Rethinking my images of God has been a life long process of re-defining the word “God” and the images that go along with that. This has led to re-define many words (Love, humility, etc.) and also have profoundly realization that all of us through our own maturing process have our own internal dictionaries with their own set of changing definitions. Oftentimes, misunderstandings happen because we let words, names or labels get in our way of understanding the meaning behind what is being said. I’m compelled to say that I feel very blessed to be at NRCC because Doug is so very gifted at clearly communicating a message without ambiguity. He defines his words and put them in context for us. We don’t have to assume, guess, or wonder about what he’s trying to say or where he’s going with it. This is an incredible blessing to me.
In truth, there are many words & images used for God all over the world and if we get hung up on what word or image is used, we risk missing the point. Regardless of the words used to formulate God in our own brains, God is and always will be the “I Am that I Am”. It’s impossible for me to put an image around that. Hence, for me, Jesus is my saving grace, He’s God incarnate. I now can have an image that I can relate to, I now can know through His Word & His Spirit what God would have me know and understand. Though finding Jesus, I’ve learned to love & trust an indefinable, inconceivable God because Jesus loved & trusted Him with His whole heart and soul. How Great is His Love! I truly don’t know how people do it otherwise. Thanks.
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February 12th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
What you propose sounds innocuous but requires a leap of faith. Our concrete images of God have a tendency to tether us to the foundations of our faith. How do we free our images of God without feeling the jeopardy of losing what we hold precious in our religious tradition?
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February 12th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Nichole, I would propose that we “free our images” of God only when we must and when the previous images are such that they harm/hinder our growth. In other words, you are right, they do “tether” us, and appropriately so. So a premature “freeing” might harm us. When one is ready for another understanding of God, the previous understanding will feel constricting. What I’m trying to say is that this is something one does when one is “ready” and not because one “should” or because the person beside us is doing it.
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February 14th, 2010 at 1:08 am
“God is our Bridegroom/Lover. Incomplete.” Wow. I’ve never even thought that we could “mess with” that metaphor. Yet I couldn’t help thinking that it, too, may prove harmful – especially when the institution of marriage is idolized. I’ve heard many a talk (at Christian conferences on marriage/sexuality, etc.) re how the relationship between husband and wife is *THE* ultimate picture of God (basis being Gen. 1-2 & Eph. 5) – and I’ve had single friends who’ve then felt inferior – as if not being married somehow lessens their spiritual journey, their ability to grow in Christlikeness (despite Jesus himself never marrying).
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doug Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
I’ve had unmarried friends too, who upon framing their image of God as Lover or Bridegroom, feel left out. What a great thing for them to be able to re-imagine the Divine in a way that fits them so much better.
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February 14th, 2010 at 1:44 am
“When you and I formulate an idea in our heads that says ‘God is kind of like this,’ there is one thing we know about our formulation. It is wrong.” What I like about this line of reasoning (& I speak as someone who does indeed love to get things “right”) is how it reflects Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (from quantum mechanics) – the idea that it is impossible to know a particle’s position and momentum (or velocity) at the same time. When you pin down one of these variables precisely, the uncertainty in the other variable increases – and you canNOT be “right” about its value (you can only approximate).
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February 18th, 2010 at 1:15 am
[...] RethinkingOurStory A One-Year Project: Retelling the Christian Story « Week 5: Rethinking God (part 1) [...]
February 18th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
This made me think of William P. Young’s the Shack where God appeared to the main character as a gregarious black woman. This is what “she” had to say about our self-imposed images of God,
“The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think”
This novel really made me take a step back and look at why I pictured God the way that I did: as a middle-aged white male sitting on a golden throne. I was incredibly thankful for the new metaphor, it works a lot better for me. I’ll keep my eyes open for the next useful one
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February 5th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
I deeply appreciate what you’ve written here, Doug. Thank you.
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Doug Hammack Reply:
February 8th, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Thank you my friend. It’s nice to know you’re listening. Doug
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