The Trinity: Within the Funk
Trinitarian theology. Sounds scary. It's not. It might be the most liberating, exuberant, all-encompassing reality there is: God is an eternity community of unconditional love. It's not the hippie-dippie mantra it sounds like.
What if this is the best place to begin, square one in the thinking, living, and being that is life on planet earth? What if how we view God shapes how we see everything else? But--and here's the scary part--what if how we view God is oh so totally wacked out? I don't think it's crazy to say that we project our funk upon God. The lingering pains from hurtful parenting. The insecure attachment bonds, and so on. From within this funk, God feels funky. We make him the recipient of our emotional baggage. He becomes an aloof father, a manipulative mother, an anxiety-provoking disciplinarian. *Smack!*
Let's face the music: People are--I'll speak for myself--I am pretty good at this kind of projecting upon God. I see God from within my fallenness, from inside my own life and head and experience. William Paul Young, author of The Shack, once said in an interview that it took him years to fully wipe away his father's face from the face of God. He saw God for who he thought or sensed he was, not who God actually was. Perhaps this kind of "enmeshment" of God and caregivers is normal at early developmental stages of life until we're old enough to separate the two and do some deep, intentional work. The point is, though God and our primary caregivers seem inseparable in our heads and hearts for many years, the truth is that God has always existed and will always exist as a holy, joyous, fountain of happy love, despite what our mothers and fathers were to us.
And as far as I can tell, this is the truth from which all other truths must flow down from: God is everlasting communion. But how do we wipe off the faces of our early caregivers--good, bad and ugly as they were--from the face of God? For that we need the incarnate Son.
What if this is the best place to begin, square one in the thinking, living, and being that is life on planet earth? What if how we view God shapes how we see everything else? But--and here's the scary part--what if how we view God is oh so totally wacked out? I don't think it's crazy to say that we project our funk upon God. The lingering pains from hurtful parenting. The insecure attachment bonds, and so on. From within this funk, God feels funky. We make him the recipient of our emotional baggage. He becomes an aloof father, a manipulative mother, an anxiety-provoking disciplinarian. *Smack!*
Let's face the music: People are--I'll speak for myself--I am pretty good at this kind of projecting upon God. I see God from within my fallenness, from inside my own life and head and experience. William Paul Young, author of The Shack, once said in an interview that it took him years to fully wipe away his father's face from the face of God. He saw God for who he thought or sensed he was, not who God actually was. Perhaps this kind of "enmeshment" of God and caregivers is normal at early developmental stages of life until we're old enough to separate the two and do some deep, intentional work. The point is, though God and our primary caregivers seem inseparable in our heads and hearts for many years, the truth is that God has always existed and will always exist as a holy, joyous, fountain of happy love, despite what our mothers and fathers were to us.
And as far as I can tell, this is the truth from which all other truths must flow down from: God is everlasting communion. But how do we wipe off the faces of our early caregivers--good, bad and ugly as they were--from the face of God? For that we need the incarnate Son.
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