God

In response to Sallie McFague’s model for God discussed in last class, I agree that people should have personal ideas and images about and of God. We try to label God on the grand scale because we have no way to wrap our head around what God truly is. The “He” and terms that people use when they speak about the deity that they worship are all human attempts to try and understand something that is so much bigger then themselves. Therefore, any man made attribute we give a deity is not going to do it justice.
Because of this I think that God is very personal. This is why certain images of God work better for others than for everybody on the whole. I cannot deny that there are obvious norms for the ideals and images of God, but I think that if you talk to people, each will tell you that they have their own God they think about. People make their own metaphors for their deity, and this brings them closer and gives them an intimacy that is different from anyone else’s relationship with that God.
Thus, I think that one idea or metaphor for God is problematic. Even the Bible does not have one name for God because of all the different attributes that He has, therefore for us to try and give Him one name seems that we are trying to generalize God. Because the names and labels that we give God are attempts to wrap our heads around the deity, we cannot say for certain which “metaphor” is the correct one. We have ideas that are given to us in the Bible as guidelines, but again the Bible has over 170 names for God, which illustrates that God has many faces and characteristics. This is why summarizing all of these traits into one ideal is a problem and such a debated topic. The God that one person worships, in essence, could be the same God another person worships, but these two people have different relationships with their God due to their experiences.
Perhaps the all-encompassing metaphors should be done away with completely, instead of trying to change them, and God should become entirely personal. The church would be there to teach what the essence of God is and continue teaching God’s message, so that people do not forget and essentially making up their own God completely. This way God can be what He needs to be to each individual.