by Philip Sudworth.
When you pray, do you have a picture in your mind of the one to whom the prayers are directed? If so, what does that picture look like? Does it change according to the situation in which you are praying? Or do you just focus on the words and feelings you are expressing?
People have shared with me prayer images as different from one another as William Holman Hunt’s Light of the World, an indistinct figure clothed in light, and a sea of faces. When “Yours”, a magazine for older readers, carried out a survey of its readers’ spiritual lives in 2000, it included a question on how they saw God. The most frequent view was of a kindly father figure or similar human form but nearly half could not think of him in that way. Other images included colour, music, light, beauty and a stream of limitless love. A BBC poll in the same year for the programme, Soul of Britain, showed that, of the 70% who believed in God, only 40% had a traditional Christian view of God while 60% thought in terms of a spirit or life force.
The God portrayed in most churches remains one with human characteristics and emotions, who is creator, king, judge and father. The throne room imagery of Revelation looms large. God is presented as the ‘King of Love’, reigning over the universe, and showing infinite mercy to those who respond to him, but also as the just judge sentencing unrepentant sinners to eternal punishment. Yet intertwined with the view of an eternal being with power and wisdom beyond our imagination is the vision of one with whom it is possible to enjoy a close intimate relationship.
Our understanding of God is only partial and our spiritual experiences and thoughts are very personal. That’s why we shouldn’t try to impose our vision of God on others but encourage them to develop an image that is most helpful to them. Frequent use is made of metaphorical language or symbolism in talking about God. Christian liturgy talks of shepherd, king, judge, servant, bridegroom, brother and sacrificial lamb – all attempts to express the indescribable, a divine mystery, in terms that finite minds can grasp.
Definitions of God by theologians can only be working hypotheses. Many questions about God cannot be resolved, despite answers in catechisms. In practice most believers do not allow their thinking about God to be limited by concerns about apparently conflicting statements on the basis that God is not limited by human logic and can be and do anything. Many believe that God is involved with us inside time and simultaneously is outside time, looking across past and future centuries; that he gives us free will but knows before we are born the circumstances in which we will make decisions and how we will choose; that he is both perfectly good in all his actions and unchanging, yet responds to prayer. Karen Armstrong has pointed out that: ‘It is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically and scientifically sound.’[1]
When Blaise Pascal died, a piece of paper was found sewn into the lining of his jacket containing the following note: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.’[2] What was important to him was the God of living faith, the God we personally experience, not the abstract theories of theologians. In this view, it is the quality of our relationship with God that is crucial; our beliefs only matter in so much as they affect that relationship.
Images of God reflect the knowledge and understanding of the world and cosmos found in the areas and times in which they were first developed. Traditional phrases in liturgy can perpetuate these images even when they are outdated. Although God is often proclaimed to be unchanging, perceptions of God do change as societies and cultures develop or – put another way – God reveals himself anew.
In the 1952, J.B. Phillips suggested that the God many people were rejecting was ‘too small a God’[3] – an image from childhood of an over-protective parent, a policeman or a headteacher who sets impossible standards. If our view of God is such that we have to keep our religious thinking separate from our day-to-day understanding of technological advances and awareness of scientific expansion, our spiritual growth becomes stunted and our faith becomes divorced from reality.
[1] Armstrong K. (1993), A History of God. William Heinemann
[2] Pascal B. (1654), Unpublished note
[3] Phillips J.B. (1952), Your God is too small. Epworth Press
Theology Everywhere 
Thank you for this post. I don’t have a picture of God in prayer other than a sense of God’s presence especially in Jesus and the Holy Spirit
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‘Definitions (sic) of God by theologians can only be working hypotheses’. When I once told an Anglican priest friend that my FAITH was a working hypothesis he was a bit cross with me. Was it not more than that? But the hypothesis ‘works’ for me, and doesn’t require polysyllabic words with Greek or Hebrew roots. Prayer doesn’t always require forms of words either for that matter.
Thank you for this morning’s T.E. piece. It needs saying.
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So long as we realise that all mental images are still idols and that God is that eternal mystery which evokes our worship and our service
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For me answers to the question of God always arises in the context of my ethical concern (love) for others. When I think about what happens In any meaningful conversation I realise there is always a third “person” present who directs or calls or demands that we care for each other. So “God” is in fact not a being, but the loving relationship itself. God is Love – and all that really matters in life is to love and be loved.
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I often find there is a hymn or song which expresses how I feel.
Mary Olivant’s hymn – MHB No. 537 is such a hymn.
I have no need of a ‘picture’ though we are all blessed by each others’ comments. Thank you.
‘Tis not to ask for gifts alone,
I kneel in prayer before His throne;
But, seeking fellowship divine,
I feel his love and know it mine,
When I can pray.
‘Tis prayer that makes my spirit strong
To do the right and fear the wrong,
To know the peace of sins forgiven,
To breathe the atmosphere of heaven;
To live, I pray.
I ought to pray, because my voice
Can make the Father’s heart rejoice;
He loves His child, and he will meet
And hold communication sweet
With one who prays.
Therefore I seek my God, and raise
My grateful thanks, my fervent praise;
While evil passions and deceit
Will vanish when before His feet
I kneel to pray.
And if, great Father, when I pray,
Thy answer can be only Nay,
Still Thou wilt comfort me and bless
With visions of Thy righteousness:
Help me to pray
Mary Russell Olivant 1852 –
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In the 14th century the writer of “The Cloud of Unknowing” was clear that, “God can be loved but he cannot be thought. He can be grasped by love but never by concepts. So less thinking and more loving.”
A hi-fi buff kept buying better and better music centres and speakers. It got to the stage that you could hear the conductor drop his handkerchief. Then one day he realized that he was so busy worrying about the quality of the sound that he was no longer listening to the actual music. So he went out and bought a basic record player. Worrying about doctrine or whether we’ve got the details of faith right can similarly get in the way of our relationship with God.
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