Updating our Picture of God: Part 1, What It Means

Proof that I’ve reached 50 years of age: I resist whenever one of my electronic devices wants to install an update. Be it my iPhone or my MacBook Air, even my Kindle Whitepaper for that matter, I cringe when asked to install an update. I hear there are some people who actually enable automatic updates. The horror!

There are at least three reasons for my resistance to updates. First, I am convinced that after so many updates are installed, my operating system will be more sophisticated than my device. It’s a trick, I fear, to ensure that I must purchase new equipment long before I’m ready to spend the money. I’m not falling for it! Second, I hear about early update adopters and the pain they must endure with glitches. Not me. I wait back until the glitches have run their course, then I update. Third, I’m 50-years-old. Stay off my lawn!

I’ve noticed that my younger colleagues, and my children, are not so concerned about updates. They allow them to take place automatically. In fact, sometimes they are excited about an update because of some new feature.

Once in a while I grumble in my office about how my device is no longer functioning properly. My patient, and younger, colleague will ask me if I have installed updates. “Yes,” I say, then under my breath complete the sentence “six months ago.” Then I give in and install the updates and, amazingly, the device functions in the manner I need.

Updating electronic devices is one thing. But there are bigger concerns of life that I have found may require an update. Along the spiritual journey, as we grow to new places, I have found that there comes a point when we need to pause and update our picture of God.

How do you picture God? If you are willing, close your eyes and picture God. Without overthinking this, what is the first “image” that comes to mind when you try to picture God? Perhaps you picture an old man on a throne. For some, you may see the face of Jesus. For still others, it may be something very different.

Regardless of what image first comes to mind, I suspect that its origin is something from much earlier in your life. When did you first picture God the way you do now? Often these images come from childhood, or from some point very early in our spiritual development.

We come to a point when we need to pause and update our picture of God, not because God has changed, but because we have changed. Both individually, and as a collective whole, we grow up over time. Our ability to understand the divine develops along the way.

This is not just a theoretical or theological exercise. Instead, it is immensely practical. We all face daily concerns with work, school, family, relationships, health, and finances. In recent months we add the stressors of a pandemic, economic uncertainty, and political division to the mix. How do you feel in light of all these stressors? Do you feel like the victim of a hostile, unfriendly reality? Or, do you feel loved, capable, and able to move through life in a confident and loving way? Albert Einstein is attributed to have said that the most important question facing humanity is, “Is the universe a friendly place? This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.” I will take it one step further and say the most important question may be “is God friendly?”

Although not always apparent at first, updating our picture of God has practical implications as to how we see the world around us. Daily life matters begin to fall into place after we install the update.

Over the past several years, I have made three major updates to my picture of God. I credit Paul R. Smith in his book “Is Your God Big Enough, Close Enough, You Enough” for first outlining this for me. But I was only able to recognize the meaningfulness of Smith’s outline because I was already experiencing it for myself. My three updates are:

God is bigger than I used to picture; God is more loving than I used to picture; and God is more internal than I used to picture.

I’ll unpack each of these in upcoming posts in this series.