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Center for Action and Contemplation
Expanding Our Images of God
Expanding Our Images of God

A New Vision of God

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
—Philippians 2:5–8 

Brian McLaren shows how Jesus as the image of God changes our understandings of who God is: 

The implications of the Philippians 2 passage are staggering. Simply put, God as known in the Christ is not the stereotypical Supreme Being of traditional “omnitheology.” That Supreme Being of Christian theology was characterized first and foremost by controlling, dominating, dictatorial power … not limited by any law except the will of the Supreme Being Himself: omnipotence

In sharp contrast, the God imaged by Jesus exerts no dominating supremacy. In Christ, we see an image of a God who is not armed with lightning bolts but with basin and towel, who spewed not threats but good news for all, who rode not a warhorse but a donkey, weeping in compassion for people who do not know the way of peace. In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy; God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.  

In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never again define God’s sovereignty or supremacy by analogy to the kings of this world who dominate, oppress, subordinate, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize. Instead, we have migrated to an entirely new universe, or, as Paul says, “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted.  

If this is true, to follow Jesus is to change one’s understanding of God. To accept Jesus and to accept the God Jesus loved is to become an atheist in relation to the Supreme Being of violent and dominating power. We are not demoting God to a lower, weaker level; we are rising to a higher and deeper understanding of God as pure light, with no shadow of violence, conquest, exclusion, hostility, or hate at all. 

We might say that two thousand years ago, Jesus inserted into the human imagination a radical new vision of God—nondominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self-giving…. Maybe only now … are we becoming ready to let Jesus’s radical new vision replace the old vision instead of being accommodated within it. Could some sectors of Christian faith finally be ready to worship and follow the God that Jesus was trying to show them [and us]?  

Reference:  
Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (New York: Convergent, 2016), 92–93. 

Jenna Keiper, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. God inhabits the rainbow of our being(s). We are all in God and God is represented in all of us, plant, human, animal, earth, star, light, dark.

Story from Our Community:  

As a Black American woman, I am struggling lately with the image of God as male, and the Trinity as masculine. I’m also feeling concerned about the horrific display of white supremacy masquerading as nationalism, and this obsession with “winning” in our political climate. I’m wrestling with the questions of: How do we continue forgiving atrocities? How do we ask men to stop hating everyone that doesn’t look like them—from hating women? I want to encourage us all—including CAC—to continue to expand the pronouns, language, and images that we use for God. 
—Kendra J.

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