Cybercolumn by Jeanie Miley: Who do you say God is?_32105

Posted: 3/16/05

CYBERCOLUMN:
Who do you say God is?

By Jeanie Miley

Say the word “God” in any group, and the images that pop up in peoples’ minds will be as numerous as the people in the room.

Time was, before I’d thought about it, when I believed we were all on the same page in how we conceptualized God. It never occurred to me that a person’s God-image was shaped by his earliest experiences with care-givers. I hadn’t thought about the fact people form their images of God based on those pictures hanging in the Sunday school rooms. I just assumed that all of us had the same ideas about God.

Shaped by the Christian story, I understood God as Good Shepherd or Great Physician, Savior and Teacher. I believed early, and I still believe, that Jesus is the best picture of God we have, but I now know not everyone with whom I live and work and share this planet shares that same belief.

The truth is that most people, I’ve learned, have not even brought their ideas about God into conscious thought. Most people have not taken the time to reflect deeply on how they think about God, and most are operating out of a childhood image of who God is, and then they wonder why their God is too small for their big challenges of life as an adult.

A person’s God-image is the most important concept he carries around in his head and heart. How a person perceives God determines how he perceives himself and how he understands his place in the world. If God is present and available, it is going to be easy for him to trust. If God is absent and disinterested or uninvolved in the world, then he is likely to believe it’s all up to him.

Seeing God as Judge and Jury keeps a person running from God, scared of committing the unpardonable sin. Seeing God as a Divine Butler or a Benevolent Santa Claus, both of which are common God-concepts, diminishes the power of the Holy One.

God created humankind in his own image, and, as some wise sage admitted, we humans have been returning the favor since time began, ascribing our tendencies and traits onto the Almighty and remaking God to fit our image. We humans cannot not be anthropomorphic, but I’m not sure that is such a good thing.

My childhood image of God was adequate for me when I was a child, and as a young adult, I had to expand it to allow room for all that I was learning in the world. Now that I am a mature adult, I need a God big enough for the largeness of my challenges, and that is why I need a full, biblical concept of the nature of God.

I don’t need to form my image of God from an idea from some novel.

I don’t need to define God by one of his human instruments, even if that human instrument acts all god-like and almighty.

I don’t need to limit God by the ways that God worked in the past, for God is forever breaking out of old boxes and limited concepts and revealing still one more dimension of his sovereign nature.

What I do need, given the largeness of the challenges I face, is the full splendor of God, at work in my life day after day after day, and the very best place for me to go for a Big-Enough God is the Bible, where God revealed his full nature and character. And I need to read it all, from Genesis to Revelation, to get the full image of who God is.

Jeanie Miley is an author and columnist and a retreat and workshop leader. She is married to Martus Miley, pastor of River Oaks Baptist Church in Houston, and they have three adult daughters. Got feedback? Write her at Writer2530@aol.com.