Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in the consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.
—Miguel de Unamuno
I love to travel. When my feet have been on the ground too long, I begin to yearn for adventure. This means I end up spending a lot of time in airports. I’ve gotten pretty good at timing things right, arriving at the right time to get some coffee on the way to my gate, finding the best spots in airports to get some work done on layovers. But for some reason, I seem to constantly have what I call “TSA fails.” Even after countless flights, I just can’t seem to think through the things that cause a serious holdup with the Transportation Security Administration on my way in.
Somehow I wear the wrong outfit with the extra zippers, which results in an intimate, yet public experience with the TSA agent. I always think to myself that I need to empty my new Nalgene water bottle before I make it to the line, but alas, there goes another bottle along with whatever favorite stickers I had on it. One time I totally forgot that I had a whole container of peanut butter in my carry on.
One of my recent major TSA failures was heading to the airport in flip-flops because it was a hot summer day and realizing in line that many others in front of me also had sandals on. That meant I was going to have the unfortunate experience of walking through the x-ray machine barefoot and placing my feet on the yellow footprint outlines right where who knows how many potentially fungus-ridden feet had stepped!
As I was trying to think if there was any way I had a pair of socks in my computer bag, I noticed a young boy behind me, only four or five years old, messing around in line. He was darting in and out of the rope line, yelling and hollering at his little sister. His parents were visibly stressed, and I heard his dad say firmly, “Son, you better calm down or a mean man is going to come take you from us.”
Without thinking, I audibly gasped. As I tried not to awkwardly stare at this family, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the look of sheer terror on this little boy’s face. I think that his dad was trying to do the best he could in that moment; he was really stressed and probably concerned that there would be consequences for their family if he couldn’t get his son under control. I have felt the burden of the kids under my care getting out of control—it’s stressful for anyone!
When I saw the look on that little boy’s face, I couldn’t help but imagine this was an experience that would stick with him for a while. Trips to the airport were certainly going to be a different experience emotionally for this little boy.
Early in our lives, we receive so many messages about who God is—sometimes directly spoken to us, sometimes indirectly expressed through our experiences. Our environment shapes us, just like walking through TSA can make us feel more anxious about the dangers in the world. Many of us form negative concepts of God, and we can unearth those images if we begin to think about them. Narratives are formed in our minds that sound much like that dad in the airport:
“You better stop behaving like that or God will punish you.”
“God won’t love you if you do this or that—or if you don’t do this or that.”
“Do you want God to be proud of you? Then you better check all the religious boxes.”
Think for a minute about some of the earliest memories you have of God in your life. Who helped shape your understanding? What environments gave you a picture of God? When do you first remember trying to imagine the Divine?
All of us have had understandings of God throughout our lives. Perhaps your earliest image of God is a positive one, but most people who do this exercise with me think back and remember a negative image of God, or god-concept (not to be confused with a God-complex—that’s a different conversation, though probably worth having in an age where narcissism is prevalent).
Psychologist Ana-Maria Rizzuto has been credited with first using the phrase god-concept to mean whatever our mind is using to represent who God is and what our relationship to God is like.[1] Her studies and others suggest that children begin to have a god concept as early as two to three years old. Some studies have shown that even kids who don’t grow up in a religious environment develop a concept of a divine being that is bigger than them and transcends their internal and external worlds.
So every one of us has been trying to wrap our human finite mind around an infinite God for our whole life. Perhaps at times it was intentional on our part, or on the part of our caregivers, relatives, churches, or community groups. But even if it wasn’t intentional, it has been happening. A god concept has been developing consciously and subconsciously through our relationships and experiences.
As an adult, you now have significant agency about your concept of God and about which experiences you’ll engage in to form it. What will inform the pursuit of your image of God? Because God is infinite, the mystery of God can be explored but never conquered, so the journey toward your god concept is never ending. It is important to remember that your pursuit of God ventures beyond yourself. You have loved ones, a partner, perhaps kids, and together you will need to ask, How are we forming our continued understanding of the Divine?
Your concept of God is continually being formed, whether you are being intentional or not. Indecision is still a decision. There really is no neutral. Your life is moving forward. Your mind, and I’d suggest your soul, are forming concepts about who God is and who God isn’t. And those concepts will have ramifications on how you live your life: what you do with your time, how you spend your energy, what you value enough to support with your time or money.
So it becomes crucial to try to understand what your current god concept is. Curiosity can lead you to intentional steps that form your understanding of who exactly you are praying to. What kind of God do you think is on the other end of your prayers?
When I began to explore my own concept of God more intentionally, I realized that I was praying to a god that I didn’t really believe in. The image of God in my mind was a god who was peering down at the earth with a giant thumb ready to squash me like a bug if I made the wrong move. My unintentional god concept was not the God I actually experienced once I was curious enough to pay attention.
Sometimes people ask themselves, “Do I actually believe in God?” That can be a deep, life-defining question. However, a better first question could be: “Do I believe in the God of my current god concept?” The answer to that question could lead down a very different road.
When I ask people about their god concept and they reveal a deeply judgmental, angry, competitive God, I have to be honest with them and say, “If that image is who God is, then I’d choose atheism.” I’m not advocating that we imagine God to be whoever we might want God to be. That’s not a helpful approach either. It seems that there are two ditches we can fall into: (1) simply accepting whatever our life experiences, relationships, and surroundings have told us about who God is. Or (2) deciding to make God into whatever concept we’d prefer. Those who fall into the second ditch, interestingly enough, tend to imagine a God in their own image. Rizzuto calls this “the god in the mirror.”[2]
If you want to stay on the road, and out of those two ditches, you have to take the steering wheel from whoever or whatever has been driving this god-concept vehicle in your life. Or perhaps no one has been driving! In either case, now is the time to take the wheel.
Grabbing the wheel is the first step on the road of intentionality when it comes to your concept of God. Human beings are complex, and we discover who God is through multiple avenues. As a person, and as a pastor, I can’t deny that the Bible is an important and central source for developing a more accurate god concept. I’ll dig into the concept of wrestling with the Bible more in part 2, but let me start here: I believe God gave the Bible to us not as a handbook for life but as a resource for knowing God more fully. This ancient collection of narratives, poems, and proverbs can’t be distilled down to a simple set of rules.
A better approach would be to see the Bible as a collection of ancient stories, letters, and poetry about Yahweh (God). The supporting characters in the Bible are human beings attempting to respond to this God who is always reaching out to them, starting with the very act of creation. The humans never respond to God perfectly—most of the time they fail miserably—but the story suggests that God comes back to the failing humans again and again. Since God gave the humans the free will to respond however they want, God doesn’t always protect them from every individual consequence to their choices. This ultimately wouldn’t help them. It’s just like when we don’t protect our own kids from every not-so-great decision they make. It helps them learn!
By the end of the story, the Trinitarian God comes to earth in the form of Jesus, providing victory over the eternal consequences of being humans who often don’t get it right. Jesus conquers the brokenness that separates humans from God by conquering death on the cross and coming back to life. This means there can be full reconciliation with God because the barriers have been removed.[3] There are many other ancient Near Eastern narratives about gods that the original audiences of the biblical books would have heard about or believed in. However, there is no other story where a god acts primarily out of love for humans rather than out of contempt, anger, or selfishness. In many narratives, the gods are depicted as generally being bothered by the very existence of humans rather than desperately wanting to be in relationship with humans and going to the greatest lengths to prove that core desire. The story about Yahweh in the Bible would have been a stark contrast to the narratives and worldview of that day. The Bible brought to light the god concepts of those original hearers of our ancient Scriptures, and I think it can do the same for us today.
In seasons of deconstruction, when you are picking apart your god concept to see what has developed, the Bible might be a core source of doubt and questions. It is absolutely worth exploring what this ancient book really means to you. If you feel like you need permission to question the Bible—to figure out if it really should be a part of how you develop your god concept—then you have it! I don’t think you need a pastor’s permission to take on that quest, but if you do, consider your permission slip signed. I encourage you to really go there, realize how many different ways of interpreting the Bible there are, and beware of falling back into the ditch of simply accepting the first perspective that seems intriguing so as to avoid having to think critically on a personal level. More on our approach to Scripture in part 2!
The Bible is by no means the only way we can understand God. Sola scriptura (by Scripture alone) is a central belief for many Christians. This doctrine, so to speak, simply means that no other original writings or words from certain leaders should be taken as having ultimate authority. For instance, we have writings from a man named Josephus, a historian from the first century who wrote about the culture in Rome around the same time that the Bible was compiled. Most Bible scholars take the writings of Josephus seriously, as they provide perspective about the ancient world. But that doesn’t mean his writings are seen as having spiritual authority in our lives.
In order to understand the Bible in our current context, we must consider other interpretive tools and resources. For instance, John Wesley, the prolific church leader who founded Methodism, suggested that our understanding of God and theology has three additional factors: reason, tradition, and experience. Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience have come to be known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.[4]
This aligns with the findings of Rizzuto, who suggests that we can’t separate from our god concept, which is rooted in our minds (reason), our community (tradition, represented by people of faith who have gone before us and who surround us), and our life story (experience). What we can do is be more intentional about all four aspects.
One way to intentionally pursue reason when it comes to your understanding of God is to read books by theologians from different traditions and backgrounds than you. When I began to read theologians who came from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds than I did, I had my mind opened to a whole new way of understanding God and Scripture.
In particular, many theologians that I read had experienced marginalization and suffering in ways I have never encountered as a middle-class white American. Through their writing, I got a glimpse into how those who have been historically oppressed might read the story of the Bible. It was the first time that I realized that most of the Bible was written by people who were experiencing oppression—the Jews in exile and the early Christians under Roman rule. By seeking out the perspective of these scholars, I have come to see God as a liberator in ways my former god concept did not. In turn, my compassion for those who suffer has grown significantly, and I’ve changed the way I see and live in my city, where many still suffer. As I’ve learned to think critically, I have been able to use reason when I think about how my faith intersects with politics, current events, and my relationships with those who don’t share my worldview or background.
It is equally important to learn from the tradition of communities of faith around you. None of us live alone on an island, even if some of you hard-core introverts daydream about the idea daily. Often when we begin to question our faith, we feel very alone—it is good and healthy to admit this. By looking back at the faith communities that have come before us, and drawing from their experiences, we can soothe that feeling of isolation.
I remember reading about Saint John of the Cross, the Christian mystic I mentioned earlier, who coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” Reading about his experience led me on a deep journey to discover how many other people in the Christian tradition had faced something similar. When I learned that even Mother Teresa had doubts and wrestled with her faith, I felt so relieved and much less alone. I learned that questions and uncertainty have always been a part of Christian tradition and that God isn’t afraid of, and even welcomes, our questions. I now see God as one who is patient with our journey and doesn’t expect us to have full understanding in order to take steps of faith one day at a time.
The worldwide experiences of Christians broaden our understanding of tradition. The courage displayed in the underground church in China for the last few decades offers perspective for me as I navigate American society and its various responses to Christianity. My friend Graham Hill leads the Global Church Project,[5] and learning from their stories of Christian traditions all over the world has changed how I understand the story of God and humanity.
Finally, our experiences really matter. We can’t change our stories. We can’t unwrite what has happened to us or what choices we have made in life. But we can continue to review the meaning of our stories. Certain experiences have shaped us deeply, and we’ve developed a sense of meaning from them. But that sense of meaning doesn’t have to be final—in fact, it is possible to find new and different meaning from the same experience. For me, a lot of that work has happened in professional therapy and counseling. I have had a couple different Christian therapists (shout out to those fabulous humans) who have helped me either reshape the meaning of some of my experiences or completely replace one narrative of meaning for another. If the idea of seeing a therapist makes you uneasy, I would love to encourage you to give it a try anyway. These new ways of seeing have set me free.
The next step when it comes to experience is to be intentional about the future experiences you hope will shape your continued growth and formation of your god concept. The unintentional god concept that had been projected on me without my permission created a series of knots I had to untie. It was easy to feel discouraged and like I lacked control. But, somewhere in the messy middle of that process, I stopped seeing myself as a victim of my circumstances and experiences and instead started seeing myself as the one who had my own decisions to make about how I might want to move forward. I put my big-girl pants on and took the wheel of my own discovery process so that I could actively integrate my faith and be intentional about my god concept. There are still days where I don’t want to wear my big-girl pants and would rather revert to the lack of agency I once had. Can’t someone just give me some easy answers?! I suspect that temptation will always follow me—and I know many people in the later stages of life who can attest to this.
When I finally took responsibility for my experiences, I couldn’t worry about disappointing others. Instead of complaining and feeling frustrated about the church I belonged to having little concern for the poor, I expressed gratitude to that community and found a new church. I took the inner angst I felt about not being taught about the mystery of God and directed it toward experiences that helped me press into mystery: spiritual direction, worship services that had traditional liturgical aspects to them, time with Christians who pursue the more charismatic and supernatural experiences with God, and spiritual practices that help me go beyond the limits of intellect to experience God more holistically.
An important part of our experience that I want to highlight is our emotions. When I hear people describe this fourth part of the quadrilateral, it often sounds like emotions are left out of the picture. Rather, I see them as an important aspect of our experience. All of our emotions are real and should be taken into account when we are paying attention to how we have formed our god concept. If we feel a sense of anger or deep fear when we think about God, we should take into account how that is shaping who we are perceiving God to be. When we validate our emotions and bring them to the other aspects of this quadrilateral, we are more likely to move toward a deeper and hopefully more accurate view of who God is. If we dismiss or disregard our emotions as a factor, we may not give credence to how they are shaping our experience.
The truth is, we do need other people to help us pursue depth in our understanding of God; we just can’t rely on their answers to avoid asking our own questions. No single church community of a few hundred people, or one pastor, could be responsible for my discovery about God. The whole church, the church represented by every ethnic group around the world, had a role to play in the growth and depth of my understanding. I learned that I could stay rooted in one small faith community while simultaneously embracing the wholeness that came from exploring how those from West Africa might understand God, or how my Latin American brothers and sisters see Jesus. And at the end of the day, I have the ability to act and step into experiences that take me deeper in the process of picturing God—a process that will be a lifelong journey because we will never arrive at a complete and full understanding of an infinite God.