Chapter 4

Okay friends, we have spent the last few chapters exploring some of the forces that shape human life. First we considered ‘prophetic imagination’ as a way of seeing beyond what is, to what could be; a hopeful future shaped by reconciliation, justice, compassion, and belonging. Next we reflected on the powerful influence of love and fear, the role of anxiety in the human experience, and the tragic tendency to relieve that anxiety through scapegoating. Beneath it all, we have shared that God’s dream – the Christian Gospel, or good news – is goodness, peace, and wholeness between each of us and God, each of us and ourselves, each of us and all others, and each of us and the earth. Now, we’re going to pivot and explore who we are in light of who God is.

First, though, we have to determine who God is.

OUR UNIQUE LENS

According to the Biblical story, we are beings made in the image of God. But what does that mean? What kind of God are we imaging, and how does our understanding of God shape our understanding of ourselves and others?

One of the most surprising discoveries of my spiritual journey has been realizing how much of what I believed about God was shaped long before I consciously thought about God. My family, culture, relationships, successes, disappointments, wounds, and religious experiences all contributed to the lens through which I view God and all of life. None of us approaches God from a neutral position. The question is not whether we have a lens, but whether we are aware of it. Until we examine it, we may mistake our fears, preferences, wounds, and assumptions for God himself.

Among the most significant influences are the relationships that shaped us in childhood. Long before we could discuss theology, we were learning lessons about love, authority, trust, forgiveness, acceptance, and belonging. We carry those lessons into our understanding of God. When the primary authority figures in our lives were harsh, distant, or unpredictable, we may unconsciously imagine God in similar ways. When they were loving, safe, and trustworthy, we may find it easier to believe that God is as well. These early experiences shape our images and understandings of God.

Yet our image of God is shaped by far more than our caregivers alone. Our family systems, culture, education, community, social status, location, experiences, relationships, and even the stories we consume all contribute to the lens through which we understand reality. The opportunities we receive, the wounds we carry, the support we experience, and our religious formation all leave their mark. Every part of life shapes the way we see ourselves, others, and God.

If the lens through which we see life is shaped by our experiences, it should not surprise us that it also shapes the God we believe in. We often imagine God in ways that reflect our deepest fears, hopes, wounds, and longings.

When fear becomes the dominant force in our lives, we will likely be drawn to an image of God who is quick to judge, eager to punish, and difficult to please. Likewise, when anxiety shapes our perception of the world, we will imagine a God who divides humanity into insiders and outsiders, rewarding those who belong while standing against those who do not. Such images can provide a sense of certainty and security, but they often reinforce the very fear and division they promise to resolve.

When scapegoating is part of our understanding of the world, we tend toward imagining a God who participates in it with us. We may believe that God shares our hostility, condemns the people we condemn, and stands against the people we fear. Rather than challenging our fear-based divisions, this image of God baptizes them.

Love, however, reveals a different God. Through the lens of love, we encounter a God whose primary posture towards humanity is compassion rather than condemnation, restoration rather than rejection, and reconciliation rather than exclusion. The God we see often says as much about the lens we are looking through as it does about the God we are looking at. Fear tends to create gods in the image of fear. Anxiety tends to create gods in the image of anxiety. Love opens us to the possibility that God is more gracious, beautiful, and loving than we ever imagined.

LOVING WHAT ISN’T

As I began to recognize the many influences that had shaped my image of God, I discovered something else: I had become very skilled at finding evidence to support what I already believed. Once an image of God is established, we naturally begin noticing and emphasizing information that confirms it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. Most of the time, we are not even aware that we are doing it. We simply assume that the God we have come to believe in is the God who is.

The more I reflected on this tendency, the more I realized that nearly every image of God can find support somewhere. The Bible contains stories of judgment and mercy, violence and peace, exclusion and embrace. Throughout history, people have appealed to scripture to justify war and peace, oppression and liberation, compassion and cruelty. Likewise, churches, pastors & priests, denominations, theologians, authors, speakers, and entire communities can be found to support any understanding of God that we have a bias toward. We can spend our lives gathering evidence for the God we already want to believe in.

This happens because our image of God is connected to something deeper than theology. As we discussed in previous chapters, it is deeply connected to our fears, wounds, anxieties, and longing for security. We are naturally drawn towards ideas that soothe our nervous systems, provide certainty in an uncertain world, and reassure us that we are safe, right, and in control.

This understanding confronted me with difficult questions: If I can find support for almost any image of God, how do I know which one is most faithful? How do I distinguish between the god revealed by my fears, wounds, culture, and assumptions and the God who truly is? The existence of proof texts alone cannot settle the matter. The deeper question is not, Can I find a verse for this? but rather, What is the clearest revelation of God’s character?

For me, these questions led again and again to Jesus.

Rather than asking how Jesus fit into my existing image of God, I begin asking whether my image of God fit with Jesus. Instead of beginning with my assumptions and reading Jesus through them, I began with Jesus and allowed him to challenge and reshape my assumptions. But as my lens can both reveal and distort, I needed something capable of helping me see more clearly. I found that clarity in the ‘cruciform (cross-shaped) God’ – the self-giving, enemy-embracing, nonviolent Jesus who reveals a God not driven by fear, exclusion, or scapegoating, but by radical love.

THE JESUS LENS AND THE CRUCIFORM GOD

Just as we can find support in scripture for many different images of God, we can also find support for many different images of Jesus. Depending on the lens we bring to the text, Jesus can appear primarily as a judge, warrior, revolutionary, teacher, miracle worker, lawgiver, or savior. We naturally notice and emphasize the parts of scripture that reinforce what we already believe. The challenge, then, is determining which image is most faithful and what should serve as the lens through which we understand Jesus, and through Jesus, the character of God.

Christians have always professed that God is love. What do we mean when we say that God is love, though? Fortunately, the New Testament does not leave us guessing. In 1 John 3.16 we read, “This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” In other words, if we want to know what divine love looks like, we must look to Jesus giving himself away on the cross. We do not begin with our assumptions, preferences, fears, or experiences and project them on to God. We begin with the cross.

The cross is not merely the conclusion of Jesus’ story, it is the clearest revelation of what his life was about all along. Everything Jesus taught, everything he modeled, and everything he revealed about the father finds its fullest expression there. The cross gathers together the entire trajectory of his ministry: loving enemies, forgiving offenders, embracing outcasts, rejecting violence, bearing suffering, and overcoming evil not through domination, but through self-giving love. The cross is not a departure from the character of God; it is the unveiling of it.

For this reason, I have come to believe that the cross should serve as the interpretive lens through which we understand Jesus, God, and ultimately scripture itself. Whatever else we may say about God must be consistent with the God revealed in the crucified Christ. If God is like Jesus, and Jesus is most clearly revealed on the cross, then the cross becomes our clearest window into the heart of God.

This is the notion of the ‘cruciform God’ – the God whose character is revealed in the cross-shaped love of Jesus. The cruciform God is not distant from human suffering, but enters fully into it. Rather than remaining detached, God willingly shares in our pain, our struggles, and even our mortality. Rather than overcoming through coercion or force, God overcomes through self-giving love. In a world that often equates power with control, dominance, and victory, the cross reveals a different kind of power: the power of humility, sacrifice, forgiveness, and love.

The cruciform God challenges many of our assumptions. Fear often imagines a God who conquers enemies through greater force. Anxiety often seeks a God who guarantees certainty, protects our tribe, and validates our hostility towards those we perceive as threats. Yet on the cross we encounter a God who refuses to scapegoat, refuses to retaliate, and refuses to answer violence with violence. Instead, we find a God who absorbs hatred and responds with forgiveness, who embraces enemies rather than destroys them, and who chooses love even when love is costly.

And because God is like this, and we bear God's image, we are invited to become like this as well. The cross is not only a revelation of God’s character, it is also an invitation into a new way of being human. Followers of Jesus are called to participate in the same cruciform love – to practice humility, forgiveness, self-giving service, and enemy-embracing compassion. The way of the cross teaches us that true life is not found in winning, controlling, excluding or scapegoating others. It is found in learning to love as God loves.

THE GOOD NEWS

The good news is not merely that God loves us.The good news is what kind of love God has and what kind of God stands behind the universe.

If God is fundamentally coercive, punitive, tribal, or violent, then fear may be a reasonable response. We might spend our lives trying to appease, satisfy, or avoid offending him. But if God is most clearly revealed in the crucified Christ, then we encounter a God whose deepest nature is self-giving love.

This changes everything.

It means that God’s posture towards humanity is not one of distance, but nearness. Not domination, but participation. Not abandonment, but solidarity. The cruciform God does not remain safely removed from human suffering. He enters it. He experiences betrayal, rejection, injustice, humiliation, grief, pain, and death. In Jesus, God knows our condition from the inside.

And that is extraordinarily good news for wounded people like me and you.

It means that suffering is not proof of God’s absence. The cross reveals a God who can be present even in the darkest places. A God who does not always rescue us from suffering, but who refuses to abandon us within it.

There is also good news here for the themes of fear and anxiety that we have been discussing.

A fear-based image of God often leaves us wondering: Am I accepted? Have I done enough? Am I on the right side? Will God reject me if I fail? Who are the enemies that God wants me to oppose?

The cruciform God answers those questions differently.

The cross reveals that God’s love precedes our performance. God’s embrace comes before our perfection. God’s response to human hostility is forgiveness rather than retaliation. Instead of demanding scapegoats, God becomes the victim of humanity’s scapegoating and exposes the entire mechanism for what it is.

Human beings often deal with anxiety by locating a problem person, a problem group, or a problem enemy. We tell ourselves that if we could just remove them, peace would return. The cross reveals the innocence of the scapegoat and exposes the violence hidden beneath our certainty. Rather than participating in our blame, God stands with the one being blamed.

And there is good news here for us as image-bearers as well.

If God is cruciform, and we are bearers of the divine image, then the goal of the Christian life is not merely believing the right things about God, it is learning to participate in God’s way of being in the world. The invitation is to become people who love rather than fear, reconcile rather than divide, forgive rather than retaliate, and embrace rather than exclude.

THE LOVE OR FEAR REFLECTION W/GOD

Honest self-reflection can help us examine our own lens. The following practice is based on ‘The Love or Fear’ exercise that we first mentioned in Chapter Two. It is meant to be gentle, and there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Their purpose is simply to help us notice the image of God we have inherited, embraced, or constructed. If we discover that fear has shaped our image of God more than love, we need not despair. The good news is that we can continue growing, healing, and learning to see God more clearly. And as our image of God changes, so too will the way we see ourselves, our neighbors, and the world.

For this exercise, simply find a quiet place, ask God (or, for my Fellow Travelers, your Higher Power) for understanding, and then breathe deeply and still yourself. When you are ready, meditate on and answer the following questions, being as honest, open, and specific as possible:

Again, be gentle with yourself. The goal of this self-reflection is not self-judgment, but greater awareness, honest curiosity, and an invitation into the larger story of love that has always been calling us beyond fear.

In closing, we have said that the scriptures teach that humanity was created in the image of God, yet much of the spiritual journey involves discovering the countless ways we have re-created God in our own image. Transformation begins when we allow our assumptions, fears, and projections to be challenged by the reality of who God truly is.

Fear tends to create gods in the image of fear, and those images often reinforce the very fear that produce them. Love reveals a different vision of God, and that vision forms us into more loving people. The God we imagine shapes the people we become, and the people we become shapes the God we imagine.

If God is fundamentally self-giving love rather than coercive power, then being made in God's image means our deepest identity is not found in domination, exclusion, or violence. It is found in love, connection, creativity, compassion, and participation in God's ongoing work of restoring Shalom: goodness, peace, and wholeness between each of us and God, each of us and ourselves, each of us and all others, and each of us and the Earth.

BLESSING

And so, as we continue on this journey of beauty and the fulfillment of God’s dream, may we remember who we are; loved, cherished and made in the image of God. And may this new understanding of the ‘cruciform God’ transform the way we live in the world – freeing us from fear, deepening our compassion, and drawing us ever more fully into the life of love, goodness, and peace for which we were created.

Amen.

Coming soon – ‘Chapter 5: The Best News’. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!