Updating our Picture of God: Part 5, Conclusion
Over the past several years, I have made three major updates to my picture of God:
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.
Conclusion
I realize that we face many practical challenges as we navigate daily life. Updating our picture of God may seem too theoretical or theological to worry with in light of the more pressing concerns of life. Yet I have found that updating my picture of God has surprising practical implications to the real challenges of living.
This all goes back to the question of whether the universe is a friendly place or not, by which we are really asking if the universe’s Prime Mover is loving or not. The implications are immensely practical. The answer to the question determines how we see life – either as a victim of harsh realities, or as someone whose primary identity is one who is loved. The answer to this question impacts how we work through every practical issue encountered in the journey of our lives.
One of my memories of being a young child, around five-years-old, has to do with my dog Holly. It was Saturday morning at our family’s breakfast table. It seemed quieter than usually that day, and I innocently asked my parents where Holly was. There was an awkward silence. My parents explained that Holly was getting older and having health problems, and that it was no longer best for her to live at our house, so they had taken Holly to live on a farm. They said it was better for her to live at that farm. I did not finish my pancakes that morning. Instead, I raced to my bedroom to be by myself and process my sadness and loss. I experienced many emotions that day, but I never questioned that Holly was now living on a farm somewhere.
Years went by. We got another dog, Taffy, that would be the dog I remember most in my childhood. Only rarely did I think about Holly. Decades went by. Then one day, after I had grown up, graduated from high school and college, and lived on my own for many years, it hit me: my parents did not really take Holly to live on a farm! I realized suddenly what had really happened: my aging and ailing pet had been put down all those years ago. In my initial innocence and later busyness, I had never re-examined the details of what happened to Holly. I had never paused to update the story of what happened to Holly. I am embarrassed to admit how old I was before I figured it out!
While it may be a crude analogy, I suspect many of us live the same way when it comes to our understanding of the divine. We carry around a very old and simple picture. It served us well enough at one point in our development. But we have grown up.
