Wednesday, September 12, 2007
A relationship with God - Is this idea healthy?
It has become trendy in Christianity to talk about our relationship with God. However, I’m not sure that it makes sense to use the term “relationship” to define how we experience God. The problem with this term is that it is pre-loaded with our human understanding of what it means to have relationship with another human being and carries all the baggage of our faulty human relationships. Think about some of the aspects of healthy and unhealthy human relationships:
- Healthy relationships need a certain amount of honest revealing of our character, past experiences, goals, and motives to each other. The depth of the relationship depends on the amount of disclosure by both parties. Any clouding or misinterpretation of facts about our self, either intentionally or unintentionally, will create unhealthy relationships and lead to mistrust. This is probably why we attempt to describe God (theology) in order to establish a relationship. We have no precedent for relating to something that we we don't know so we manufacture knowledge for the sake of relationship.
- Clear, open, and frequent two-way communication is necessary. How long would a relationship last if phone calls were not returned for days, weeks, or ever. Could a relationship last with sketchy standards for open free-flowing communications.
- Physical proximity is vital. Without “face to face” interaction, healthy relationships cannot form or mature beyond a certain point. In a state of separation our imagination often runs wild and creates a false sense of reality. Long distance or Internet based relationships are modern examples of how relationships are unhealthy without physical proximity. This is probably why we create houses of worship so we can simulate physical proximity to God.
- The mutual need for relationship is crucial. If one person’s need for the other is not appropriately reciprocated, then an unhealthy dependency is inevitable. Dependent Personality Disorder or Codependency can manifest as the result of an imbalance in relationship needs. This is obviously a problem with traditional images of God.
Isn't any relationship with God going to face challenges in all four of these areas? If we attempt to explain our interaction with God based on our understanding of human relationships like a father or a king, then it feels like we are setting ourselves up for failure because God isn't literally our father or our king. Should we assume that the Bible's use of human relationships as metaphors for connection with God imply that those metaphors completely exhaust the meaning of our connection with God? The image of a father has all sorts of issues and the idea of having a king is down right distasteful to most modern western people. The goal of the bible is not to tell us which metaphor we have to use for all time but rather to suggest how certain people connected to God at certain points in history. For them, the idea of a good king who protects them and institutes justice and peace was a beautiful concept. That won't fly today.
Applying one of these metaphors to our connection with God becomes unhealthy if taken too literally and this mistake accounts for many of the problems with religion. We have traditionaly built an image of God that is destined to manifest unhealthy malformed relationships.
I am leaning toward other language to explain God and lessening my grip on any particular set of metaphors. We might try to imagine a fish that is sustained and suspending in life-giving water just as we are sustained in God. It might also make sense to think about the types of relationships we find in modern Chemistry. When Hydrogen “relates” to Oxygen it forms a wonderful transformation on a molecular level in order to form water. Another example is to imagine how DNA “relates” to life. Francis Collins, a Christian and physician-geneticist who was a leader in the Human Genome Project, calls DNA the “language of God”. This may be close to what Paul Tillich means when he talks about God as the ground of all being. In that sense, I would agree with the author of Genesis who tells us in creative poetic metaphor that God speaks life into being.
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6 comments:
The goal of the bible is not to tell us which metaphor we have to use for all time but rather to suggest how certain people connected to God at certain points in history
Excellent point, and I really like the idea of coming up with new metaphors for our relationship with the Divine that reflect the modern worldview. I like some of the examples that you came up with.
I think this is why it sets my teeth on edge when asked if I have a personal relationship with Jesus. A healthy relationship between two people usually means that both people are going to grow and change as a result of each other. In traditional Christianity, God does neither. (Although I do think God changes, just not in the way a person does).
I've always held that a word other than relationship needs to be used, but maybe that's me interpreting it through how a human relationship functions? I just don't see how anyone can get away from that interpretation, because of what the word "relationship" symbolizes.
This post has made me think quite a bit about what I mean when I say "relationship with God." I still think of God as a being, but when I went back in my mind through all the times I have "felt God", they were more about sensing a presence rather than actual interaction with someone. Perhaps saying that I experience God rather than I have a relationship would be a better way for me to say it.
Good thoughts. I think this goes back to thinking that God is a person rather than a force. You can't really relate to a force, but you can to a person.
The problem, as you've highlighted, is that God is unlike any other 'person'...
Jesus seemed to endorse the idea of relating to God with most of his parables--the prodigal son, etc.
I think this is why Christians have long talked about it being a relationship, not religion.
I think Father and Son being two of the three also adds to the credibility.
God, after all, chose to redeem us through the most relational means possible.
Chuck,
Thanks for the comments. I don't see how Jesus "endorsed" the idea of relationship with God. I do see that he used those metaphors to describe God in human terms. That is the main thrust of my post. Is that healthy if we in turn take those metaphors literally.
Can you please expand on your comment "God, after all, chose to redeem us through the most relational means possible?
I can't make sense of that. What did God do to redeem us that is any way like a human "relationship"?
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