There is a popular quote that expresses the ease with which we can deceive ourselves when it comes to understanding God:
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott11
The quote makes the point that we tend to map our own preferences and biases onto God so that our image of Him is really just a projection of our own selves.
Although this quote was mainly about our relationships and how we think of other people, it seems the principle can also be applied elsewhere. In fact, there is probably a danger of mapping many of our own theological perspectives onto God, not just how we think about people.
In general, we form opinions about spiritual and religious matters in ways similar to the way we do about people – through our upbringing, associations with other people, life experiences, and so on. Our opinions may change from time to time, but many of them stay the same throughout our lives.
It’s rare that we stop to wonder how it is that we are able to determine the correct perspective on so many topics when so many intelligent, educated, devoted believers throughout history came to different conclusions. Instead, we just assume that we’ve got it right and everyone else is wrong, even ignoring the fact that we’ve changed our minds over time.
We then tend to associate with people who have similar perspectives. It’s common to form friendships with like-minded people, join churches that agree with our theology, perhaps even marry someone who shares our views about the world. Thus, we end up in a bubble of like-minded people who reinforce what we already think.
It becomes natural to assume that God’s perspective is whatever opinion that we’ve come to accept. Testing our beliefs by listening to other perspectives seems irrational, even dangerous. If we truly believe that we have determined God’s Truth on a matter, then it may even seem heretical.
However, it is unlikely (to say the least) that any of us is infallible in our understanding. So when we project our perspectives onto the God we worship, we can end up worshiping an imperfect, human-created deity. We effectively create God in our own image, worshiping a God of our own design.
In a way, this seems more heretical than most of the theological topics we typically argue about, yet we give no thought to the results of worshiping a human-created God. For example, one of these results is that it leads us to separate from each other, when in fact our faith should be bringing us together as a single Body.
Instead, when I ponder James’ description of wisdom from above as peaceable, impartial, and open to reason (James 3:13-18), it seems we should strive to hold our opinions lightly, and in humility, seek to prioritize relationships over reasoning.
- The quote appears in “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott, where she attributes it to her friend Tom Weston ↩︎
Exploring Antioch 