The God We Meet in Our Stories
How our experiences shape the internal pictures of God we hold
“When the night is dark and the wind is howling, it is the love that we have experienced that drives our definition of love, not the love we have read about in the Bible.” - Terry Wardle
Even though you’ve heard God described as full of compassion and know He is always present, do you sometimes feel confused as to why you experience him as distant, disapproving, or absent?
Our experiences, from childhood to adulthood, shape the internal pictures we hold about God—sometimes in ways we don’t even realize. In this week’s Faith & Feelings episode, I share stories of 4 different women, and how they each came to experience God differently based on their life experiences:
Mara, a woman who has experienced a lifetime of rejection and is now trying to navigate a difficult marriage.
Charissa, a hard-working graduate student who wants to get things right.
Hannah, a pastor who doesn't realize how exhausted she is.
Meg, a widow and recent empty-nester who is haunted by her past.
These stories are taken and adapted from a chapter in Sensible Shoes: A Story about the Spiritual Journey, a bestselling novel written by last week’s guest Sharon Garlough Brown. The first time I read them, I couldn’t put them down.
I found myself in these women, in their stories, and how they came to perceive God…and I think you will as well. Listen to the episode here:
Or listen to the episode on Spotify or YouTube.
As you listen, notice how certain core memories shaped their perceptions of who God is…memories that their bodies held, but that they didn’t have words for (or even awareness of). This would be an example of implicit memory.
Neuroscience describes two different ways of knowing: explicit and implicit.
Explicit beliefs are the things we consciously know we believe. These beliefs include linear, abstract, verbal, and analytical thought processes.
Implicit knowledge, on the other hand, tends to be more experiential than cognitive. It’s a “gut-level” kind of knowledge that is enstoried and emerges out of our experiences within relationships. Interestingly, the templates and unconscious stories held by our implicit memory are what most strongly influences how we are with others, and how we are with God.
We’ve all come to know God on these two different levels – explicitly and implicitly. Our explicit theological beliefs and ideas about God make up our God concept, whereas our felt, embodied, and lived relational experiences make up our God image.
Many of us have large gaps between our God concept and God image. The larger this gap, the more jarred and fragmented we will feel inside.
As you reflect, which of these women’s stories did you most connect with? And how did this story put some words to the internal picture of God — or God image — that you might hold?
Journeying together,
Taylor Joy