Just as how we
conceptualize God
affects what we think the Christian life is
about,
so do our images of God.
~ Marcus Borg*
Have
you ever thought about what image of God you have? We’ve all had lifelong
influences, some more unconscious than others. In your mind does "he" look
like the illustrations in Children's Bibles, or maybe a kindly white grandfather
with a beard by Michaelangelo, or a stern disciplinarian father? What about Jesus as
a white sun-tanned, blue eyed European whose long flowing locks shine with
expensive-looking highlights? How about a middle eastern semite ~ a darker-skinned
young Jewish man deeply tanned from the desert of Palestine? Does your mind see the
Holy Spirit as a white dove descending upside down or as non-burning tongues of
fire come first in your mind?
Of course
it's easier to relate to and feel comfortable with someone we can picture in
our minds, someone who looks like us or someone we know and like. Have you ever had the
experience of meeting up with a friend from childhood ~ you have
that old photo in your mind and suddenly you're confronted with the
reality of time passing. Perhaps it all works fine or perhaps the memory and the reality
are difficult to mesh together.
Just as we watch children grow from newborns, to
toddlers, to older children, teens, young adults...and just as
we sometimes want to hold on to our images of them at a certain moment in
time, it's important for our relationships with them to grow and allow who they
become to deepen our bonds. It’s also important to understand that a Jewish
child, a Muslim child, an Asian-African-Palestinian-Caribbean-South American-Christian
child will likely [and hopefully] have imagined anthropomorphic images depicting the God of
Abraham as much like older versions of themselves.
Of course we don't have the luxury of knowing what God looks like ~ and if we did,
would it be God? But, we can look at how or if our early ideas
about our mind-image of God have or have not evolved as we’ve grown and how
that expresses the stagnation or the maturity of our faith.
Sr.
Sandra Schneiders, IHM, STD, Professor Emerita of New Testament Studies and
Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley has
said, God is more than two men and a bird.
Has your Trinity
ever looked like two men and a bird in your mind's
eye? How does your current mind's image affect your prayer, your
relationship, your sense of who God is in your life?
Dear God,
I'm concerned that I might have
the wrong image of You in my mind. I want so much to capture the right picture
of You in my imaginings ~ all of You, the Trinity ~ God, Jesus, Holy Spirit,
so that I can feel that I'm relating to You correctly. And yet somehow
that doesn't seem quite right, either. Well then, for today
I'll give up trying to apply and accept someone else's
image of You. I'll take on thinking about how I am
made in Your image instead of You being made
in my image. I'll pray for the inner security and spiritual freedom to let You out of the box I try to
keep You in. And as I mature in my relationship with You, perhaps I will be
able to realize that all I need to do to know You in my mind and heart and
soul, is to look in the mirror and at all those I meet daily and all those I love
and have loved, then I will see the faces of My Trinity. amen.
*Marcus Borg [1942-2015], was a Fellow
of the Jesus Seminar**, and the first person to be designated as Distinguished
Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. Educated at
Moorhead College in Concordia, Minnesota; Union Theological Seminary, in New
York City; and earned a Masters degree in theology and a Ph.D. at Mansfield
College, Oxford, England. A progressive Christian with a significant record of
scholarship and research of the Historical Jesus, a prolific author and
lecturer, and known internationally through videos, lectures, and television,
Borg was a frequent collaborator with other theologians with whom he both agreed
and disagreed. He remains one of the most recognized
and influential theologians of today. Two of his best known
works are Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The
historical Jesus & the heart of contemporary faith; and, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking
the Bible Seriously but Not Literally.
**The Jesus Seminar,
then and now: https://theconversation.com/getting-the-gist-of-a-historical-jesus-the-jesus-seminar-30-years-on-44465
No comments:
Post a Comment