The necessity of allowing one’s image of God to be flexible came to me recently as I spoke with the mother of a young gay man who had died from a drug overdose. She confessed to me that she had not been a ‘good mother,’ unable to fully embrace her son’s sexuality. She withheld her unconditional love from him because her image of God was of a God who did not unconditionally love ‘the homosexual.’

We hold onto images of God, ourselves, and others, even when they become burdonsome. We hesitiate let go of them because we know that new images might require a conversion on our part, a change which we are not sure we want to make. Only we can decide to quit carrying oppressive images of God and at the same time accept new, images of God, self and others.

Most of us cling to the image of God that we acquired as a child or adolescent, because it helped us make sense of our lives. However, no one image of God is the whole truth — God after all is infinite! For example, as a child we may have believed that God would answer our prayers in life threatening situations. But what happened to my image of God when I prayed for a very sick person who then died?

If I have a single image of God and this is contradicted by a new and painful experience in my life, in a sense, I have the same options regarding my image of God as I have when I outgrow a pair of shoes:

I can continue to wear the same shoes, even though they hurt my feet — ‘why is my good God punishing me?’

I can go barefoot — become an atheist or an agnostic

I can find shoes that fit — allow my image or images of God to match my understanding of God , the way my life has revealed God to me.

To choose the third point, I must reexamine everything, even the Scriptures. What do the Scriptures teach me in light of my life experience? “What meaningful and instructive things have I overlooked?” This choice requires an effort on our part to go beyond what we were taugh as a child. It requires a commitment to continual growth regarding both my image of self and of God.

Creator God, open my mind and eyes, my heart and my spirit, to accept the revelations that you have prepared for me.

This is an encore presentation of my September 4, 2010 post.

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