Recently I sat down with Rev. Jane Day to explore the image of God as we reflected on the question, "who is God for us today?". Jane is a Baptist Minister who works for Regents College in Oxford, and part of her work involves overseeing the teaching of ministerial students and future church leaders. She spoke on this topic during the Christmas Day service at my local Methodist Church, and I personally felt deeply challenged, so I wanted to share her words and ideas with members of SCM. Our conversation focused on how our image and understanding of God shapes our faith, our communities, and the way we live in the world.
What follows are the reflections she used during our podcast conversation, shared in blog format to aid personal reflection.
When did you start to think about your image of God?
A number of years ago, I had the privilege of training to be a Spiritual Director in South Africa with the Jesuit Institute of Spirituality. As part of that training, we were invited to do an exercise on thinking about our images of God. We discussed this in some detail, and I recall the speaker telling a story by Gerard Hughes, who was a Jesuit Priest.
The story goes, according to Gerard, that for some of us, who God is may have been shaped by a negative experience, and so we might have an image, not dissimilar to a story that he tells about 'Good Old Uncle George'. The story goes - the family visit Uncle George, and upon arrival, Uncle George leads the children into the mansion's dark basement, where they hear screams and visualise an array of blazing furnaces. Terrified of what they saw, Uncle George warns the children that if they don’t visit him, they will be hurled into the blaze. As the family leave, the frightened children hold their parents' hands and their parents' ask them if they love Uncle George with all their heart and soul. Terrified of what they witnessed in the basement, they say ‘yes’ even though they loathe him.
So the point of the story is that for those children, their image of God was tied up with 'Good Old Uncle George' – an image of a God that might lock you up in the basement and someone to be feared, rather than a loving and compassionate God.
And the exercise that I was invited to engage in considered our operant (the image of God we actually live from) and espoused (the image of God we believe in) images of God. For example, my espoused image might be that God is loving and kind. Yet the operant image is the God that we relate to so for those children the operant was the God who would lock them up in the basement.
And when I reflected on this, it felt like a bit of a lightbulb moment because we might believe one thing about God – our espoused image, but the operant is how we actually experience and react to God.
And sometimes these are in tension, and, in turn, shape how we live. So if my image of God, for example, is one that is a judge, then my response to God might be one of fear or guilt.
And given that we are made in the image of God, then it must translate that I will operate out of that image for good or bad.
So, Jane, who is God for you today?
I’ve been thinking about my image of God and Jesus recently. Each year I go on a six-day silent retreat, which is intentional on my part as I seek to deepen my friendship with God. And so at the beginning of December last year I headed off to St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in Wales and was invited to ponder who God is for me in the here and now, not last week or last year, or in the future, but in the present. And as I prayed the image that came to mind was me as a child and I had just come in from the snow and my mum was there to greet me at the door and she took off my gloves and socks because they were soaked through from playing in the snow. You may remember that image as a child, depending on where you lived and whether you had snow. But I sat with this image in prayer for about 30 minutes in silence and the more I sat with the more I imagined Jesus as this compassionate, loving, kind and caring person who is there for me, someone who will take my wet gloves off when I’ve had fun in the snow, and show love, which then of course invites me to show that same compassion to others.
The other image that is resonating with me in this season is a Hospitable God. In another prayer time as I was pondering my image of God, I became aware of the hospitality of Jesus.
And this is also challenging me - if Jesus is hospitable to me, then how does that shape how I live, for example. Am I showing hospitality to others? When was the last time I invited someone for a coffee or a conversation?
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Jane went on to tell me how important it is to pause for a moment within the business of our lives and reflect on this. When she gave a talk on the image of God at a recent Church service, she heard 20-30 people all share who they felt God was for them today. She was blown away by how varied and beautiful people’s responses were with people saying God was their healer, friend, and crutch to name but a few. This fueled her imagination but also left her deeply challenged.
If we take seriously the idea that we become the God we image then this is forces us to think about how we image that in our own lives and communities. Are we showing up as caring, loving, and helpful to those around us? It is also helpful to unpack even when the image is negative and painful and challenging, ackowledging the pain we may feel and reflect on what has led to it in hopes to make it one that is more positive.
We invite you to reflect on the image of God using the following prayer as a way in. We hope this will help you consider your own image of God in an accessible way. There are many, many ways God is described in the Bible, and it can be difficult to stare at a blank page and ask, “who is God for me today?”. So Jane offers this prayer as a way to guide our thoughts and reflections.
‘O Thou Sudden God’ Prayer by Janet Morley
O Thou Sudden God
generous in mercy,
quickener of new life,
giver of new love
irreverent,
subversive,
deep source of yearning,
startling comforter,
bearer of darkness,
unmaker of old paths,
bringer of strange joy,
abundant,
disturbing,
healing unlooked for tender and piercing
late have I loved thee
O beauty so ancient and so new.
And we leave you with the question,
Who is the God with you today?
Who is the God with you today?