Splash in the Face

Language, Image, and Intimacy

Aug 1, 2005

Saying For Today: The intent of the Christian faith is to draw us into an intimate relationship with the God everywhere, a God whom we cannot get away from, but that we are called to recognize and surrender to in Love.

A Teacher became frustrated from trying to communicate to a disciple the essential nature of healthy religious experience. One day the Teacher was once more approached by the disciple, asking, “Teacher, what is the essential nature of spiritual reality?” The frustrated but wise Teacher picked up his glass of water, sitting to his side, lifted it, and threw it in the face of the disciple. “There,” said the Teacher, “is the answer to your question.”

William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, contrasted firsthand religious experience with secondhand religion. Our religious culture has been shaped by what Marcus Borg calls “supernatural theism” (The God We Never Knew). Supernatural theism goes somewhat like this:

God created everything. God is in heaven and looking down on us. God is on His throne, and Jesus sits next to God, and angels are flying around the throne. He knows everything we do. We pray to God up there. He answers us down here. When I die, I want to go there to be with God in heaven, where He waits for me. Until then God sometimes intervenes in history, and once in a while He seems to answer my prayer. Sometimes I call God intervening a miracle, when it seems to defy natural law and is very impressive. But, generally, those miracles in the Bible, like a great flood and raising dead persons is of a bygone age. God is like a big person, like a father in heaven someplace, but God is a very powerful and inaccessible God.

Another form of religion shaping our culture is that God is all-encompassing Spirit. Borg and others call this panentheism. God as all-encompassing Spirit goes somewhat like this:

God is Spirit, God is everywhere, and we are all in God and God in us all. God does not exist, for God is existence; God is Being itself, so God is the Ground of Being. All creation participates in God, for all creation comes from God, as Ground of Being. I do not have to pray to God as being somewhere, for God is everywhere. I might speak of God as being at a location, but I know that is only a symbol that I can respect but not take literally. God is not local, but nonlocal, everywhere. God does not intervene in our lives, as much as God is already participating intimately in every aspect of creation. God will enable us to do great things, if we trust the process and take responsibility to co-create with God. God can be addressed and talked about with anthropomorphic words like Father or King, but God can be referred to in other ways equally well, words like Spirit, Grace, Love, Light, Wonderful Presence, Light, Mystery, …

What does this brief writing on imaging God have to do with how we relate with God? Well, if our destiny is intimacy with God, then, the way we speak of and image God is vitally important, for it will either promote or not the fulfilling of our longing for intimacy with God. Frankly, many persons, I believe, struggle to enjoy intimacy with God, for their images of God are largely distant and distancing in nature. How does a far-off, up in heaven God image facilitate intimacy between creatures on earth and God?

I, as others, am contending that we must discover and use, in private devotion and public worship, images that help persons connect to the immediacy of the Divine. The intent of the Christian faith is to draw us into an intimate relationship with the God everywhere, a God whom we cannot get away from, but that we are called to recognize and surrender to in Love.

The Holy Spirit, or holy Spirit, is one way the New Testament writers sought to wed the transcendence and immanence of the Divine. However, these are human ways of trying to deal with what appears contradictory. God, however, being wholeness, does not contain actual contradictions.

As the early Church taught, the Holy Spirit is God-With-Us, not simply an extension or manifestation of God. The Acts called this Spirit the “Spirit of Christ” and recognized that the Spirit, or God, continues in the life of the Church and world, loving it and seeking to lead it to wholeness and new creation, both personal, social, and environmental new creation.

The Jesus of St. John’s Gospel sought to teach this ongoing, immediate Presence of God, when he taught about the coming of the Spirit:

"If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor (or, Advocate, Encourager, Comforter), who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him. But you do, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. (St. John 14.15-17, NLT)

I am telling you these things now while I am still with you. But when the Father sends the Counselor (or, Advocate, Encourager, Comforter) as my representative—and by the Counselor I mean the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I myself have told you. (St. John 14.25-26, NLT)

But I will send you the Counselor (or, Advocate, Encourager, Comforter)—the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will tell you all about me. (St. John 15.26, NLT)

Spiritual Exercise

1. Review your favorite names, titles, and images of God. Which ones reflect a more distant God and which ones a more near God?
2. Do you tend toward thinking of God as somewhere else? Always near?
3. List several names, titles, or images of God that reflect the panentheistic view of God? Write out a prayer including all those words. Feel free to use examples from the Bible, literature, nature, and everyday experience.

Prayer

Spirit, blow through my mind and astound me with your Mystery,
blow through my heart and set my heart afire with your love. Amen.

-Brian K. Wilcox

OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.