Presence Within

 

               I had a long conversation with a friend today. It was a really meaningful conversation about a lot of things of a spiritual nature.  The things we talked about have been rolling around in my mind, and I need to sort them out. So, I’m turning to my favorite mode of processing – writing. I’ve been grappling with a lot of things of a spiritual nature for a while now. I haven’t lost my faith or felt estranged from God. On the contrary, I feel his presence closely. But I have massive issues with a lot of the ways he is portrayed to the world by well-meaning Christians. And I have been wrestling with the fact that, being a bearer of God’s image, the way I interact with the world around me matters quite a lot.

               I think this is where we often lose our way in our religious traditions. The thinking goes something like this: “I profess to love God, so I have to be perfect.” Or maybe this, “Getting my religious beliefs correct is so important that I have to dissect the Bible repeatedly until I am CERTAIN that I am doing all the right things.  Then I can tell everyone else what all the right things are and ‘hold them accountable’ to the things I have determined are right. You know, for their sake.” Or maybe it sounds like this, “Jesus died for me, so I owe him a life that is free from sin.” And in our desperation to be “Godly,” we somehow manage to make ourselves God. In our mad dash toward righteousness, we can actually lose what makes us most like Jesus, the ability to see people as whole and beautiful just as they are. And I am afraid that what happens often is that we grow up learning how to manage our images instead of how to manage our hearts.

How many times have you heard someone say or even said yourself, “He just seemed like such a nice guy” or “She always seemed like such a Godly woman,” when someone’s harmful life choices have all of a sudden been unveiled? How many people have you known or heard about that attended church faithfully, taught Sunday school, or maybe even pastored a church that lived a double life for YEARS that no one knew about? How does this happen? We learned how to manage our images instead of how to manage our hearts. When what is harped on in your church or your home is sin, and a list of what constitutes sin, and how angry sin makes God, and how people who love God don’t sin, and how you better know what is and is not a sin, and how sin will get you thrown into eternal torture (even though we also teach that grace is all-encompassing, go figure), you form expectations of yourself that are unrealistic. And when you fall short of those expectations what happens? You experience crippling shame and fear.

When you are taught from childhood by your parents, your church, or others that you are not allowed to make mistakes, guess what? You have no choice but to develop two personas. This may eventually come out in finding out the pastor has been having an affair for 10 years. Or it might come out in a diagnosable mental illness from so many years trying to live two lives – the one where you are perfect and sinless and the one where you are an actual human. Is harping on sin and perfection actually counterproductive to preventing the hurtful behaviors we are trying to prevent? I think so. Maybe the shame spiral and the lack of self-compassion that accompany these modes of religion are, in fact, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts that leave us miserable trying to live up to the “expectations” of the God that actually lives within us.  Maybe we behave miserably because we are miserable in our shame and imperfection. If we would only accept that we innately bear God’s image instead of trying to earn it, might we live in ways that are healthier for ourselves and everyone else around us? I say, absolutely. I have gone through my own transformation and realization of how legalistic thinking caused incomparable damage in my life. And now, I sit in therapy sessions and listen to clients talk about how much shame they feel and how they can’t forgive themselves or love themselves. These deeply ingrained beliefs about themselves came from a harsh interpretation of a good and loving God. And it just breaks my heart.

What does it mean to bear God’s image? It is not a heavy weight that one has to carry on your back. It is the thing that makes you feel so light you could fly. God’s image is not restraining. It is freeing. It is so freeing. What have we done to God’s image that we should wear it like handcuffs? Oh, that we could unravel our doctrine and look at God’s face for just one minute. Everything would change. We would never be the same.