By Pat McCloskey, O.F.M.

Losing your first baby tooth can be very traumatic until you learn that this loss is nature's sign that adult teeth will soon appear. Losing a childhood image of God (for example, the viewpoint that an all-powerful God would never let anything bad happen to me) can be much more painful than losing that first baby tooth. Although adult teeth grow in without any conscious help from us, more mature images of God do not automatically replace those which we must rethink or rephrase because of our religious education and life experiences.

Childhood images of God reflect a childhood faith. Fair enough; we all have to start somewhere. An adult faith, however, requires more adult images of God, that is, new mental pictures which can help adults better understand a God never fully captured in human language. Childhood images of God as judge and father can be complemented by other biblical images of God, such as those portraying God as potter and mother.

Childhood images of God are not automatically upgraded to adult images. Childhood images of God may need to grow if we are to have a vibrant, adult faith. Often a childhood image combines something true (God is all-powerful) with a mistaken conclusion (God will never let anything bad happen to me). If we fail to see how our childhood images of God are incomplete, we risk stunting our growth toward an adult faith.

What image of God do I carry?

Often you and I drag behind us images of God—and related images of ourselves and others—which are increasingly heavy. We refuse to leave them behind, however, because we suspect that more mature images might require an even greater conversion on our part. We can decide to quit carrying oppressive images of God and at the same time accept new, interrelated images of God, self and others.

Images of God can grow as we do.

Most of us gravitate toward two or three images of God as long as they help us make sense of life around us, but those images are not necessarily the whole truth about God. For example, God is a loving creator who may not answer my selfish prayers (like winning the lottery), but God will certainly answer my prayers if it's more serious (like someone's life), or so I think. But what happens to that image of God when I pray for a very sick person who then dies?

If I have a single image of God and this is decisively contradicted by a new and painful experience in my life (God will always protect me, but last week I was beaten and robbed), in a sense, I have the same options regarding my images of God as if I outgrow a pair of shoes: (1) I can continue to wear the same shoes and complain that they do not fit (why is this good God punishing me?); (2) I can quit wearing shoes altogether (become an atheist or an agnostic); or (3) I can find shoes that fit (find images which do justice to all of God's self-revelation and to all of life as I have experienced it).

A Christian who chooses the third option must reexamine the Scriptures and reconsider the lives of holy Christians to see if he or she has missed any key information. In fact, this third option is a commitment to continual growth regarding the person's images of God.

God's self-revelation is given in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament; followers of Jesus must turn first to those sources for their images of God.

Images of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.

What do you immediately think of when someone mentions the "Old Testament God”? Many Christians are so unfamiliar with the Hebrew Scriptures that they readily believe that all its images of God are angry and legalistic. The truth, however, is more complicated. All the inspired writers wrote about the same God, but not all of them had the same images of God. Just as children can grow toward more truthful images about their parents, so we can grow toward more adult images of God. Why should we accept from the Hebrew Scriptures only the stern images and discard all the others?

Images of God in the New Testament

Christians often have the opposite problem with images of God in the New Testament. We can fondly remember the parables of the Good Shepherd (John 10) or the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), while forgetting that Jesus' parable about the Last Judgment (Matthew 25) presents us with the tough challenge to serve Christ in the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Christians need to remember Jesus' story about the Pharisee praying in the Temple ("O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity...") while the tax collector at the back simply struck his breast and said "O God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18). Jesus' description of the Pharisee is as stern and uncompromising as his view of the tax collector is compassionate. The common image of a loving and generous New Testament God should not erase the need for ongoing conversion to the Lord's ways.

God is neither an ogre in the Hebrew Scriptures nor an indulgent grandfather in the New Testament. The Bible contains varied images of God because God inspired diverse images.

Growing with life.

The wonderful variety of images of God in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures arises partly from the dissatisfaction of several biblical authors with the conventional images of God presented to them.

Divine inspiration works with the human maturing process rather than replacing it.

The idea of God serenely guiding the hand of the inspired writers should be replaced by that of God helping the inspired writer to face his or her challenges to faith and to record a message needed for future believers. Truthful images of God, a healthy image of oneself, an honest image of others—we do not deepen these after the crises of daily life have passed but rather while we handle those crises in a faith-filled way.

Developing adult images of God. Part of our difficulty in adjusting our images of God is that we must simultaneously adjust our self-image and the way we see other people. Whether we like it or not, our images of God, self and others are all tied together. Whatever lenses a person uses to see God are the same lenses for seeing oneself and others.

Developing adult images of God can be challenging, enriching and scary. Men and women become adults spiritually not with the simple passing of years but rather when they begin to recognize how much their images of God fall short of the reality and how much God stretches us to respect all men and women created in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27). When we truly convert, we surrender our idols and accept life on God's terms. Only then can our images develop until we see God face-to-face, so to speak, at the eternal banquet.

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