12/30/2023 0 Comments Bible study images![]() Her private images of God kept her from leaving a violently abusive relationship. The woman who described God as a bully with a club was paralyzed by this image. I believe this is important for several reasons.įirst, our private images of God can have a powerful impact on our behaviors, even without our conscious awareness. In spite of our fears, however, I believe it is critical that we explore our private images of God. Viewing God in negative ways may seem unacceptable and frightening. When we examine our private images of God and discover significant distortions, we may feel horrified at the thought that we could harbor such negative images of God. And the image of God as an abusive bully is likely to have a more powerful impact on our emotions and behaviors than our doctrinal statements about God because our images of God are rooted in early formative experiences. We may affirm that we believe in a God of love and grace, but our images of God may be of an abusive bully. Our images of God, therefore, may not be the same as our doctrinal affirmations about God. These emotionally laden images of parents or of other early caretakers form the basic foundation of our expectations in relationships with all other people, including God. All of our experiences, from our earliest days, have been stored in our minds, some of them as emotionally laden images. These images became linked with the soothing we felt or with the increased fear we felt in interacting with these important faces and voices. Images of our mother’s face when she was distressed and when she was pleased, or of our father’s face when he was angry or when he was laughing – all are stored in our memory. From the first days of life we began storing memories of our emotional experiences. Long before we were old enough to think in words, we thought in pictures or images. That is, they are a powerful combination of thoughts and feelings. Our images of God are not the same as our ideas about God. It seems that people who believe in a God of love and compassion sometimes experience private images of God which are disturbing. I have observed in myself and in others that this kind of internal conflict about God is fairly common. ![]() But their private images of God were in direct – and painful – conflict with their intellectual convictions about God. They both would have affirmed that God is a loving and grace-full God. Neither person would have signed a doctrinal statement which described God as someone who carries a large club, or as a someone with a mean face. These descriptions of God come from deeply committed Christians. God has a mean face, I don’t like to think of him looking at me. God is waiting around the next corner with a club to punish me.
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