Time to redraw your picture of God?

Revd Gary van Heerden Chaplain

Fewer Australians are identifying as Christians and more are claiming to have no religion. In the last three censuses (2011, 2016, 2021), Christians have decreased from 61% to 40% and Australians reporting no religion have risen from 22% to 40%.

Just as Christian belief was once passed down through the generations, the baby boomers’ rejection of organised religion has gained momentum among their Millennial children and Generation Z.

Being Chaplain at Scotch College at such a time is interesting, challenging and a privilege in equal measure! Some weeks when assemblies, Chapels and Kirk@scotch1 align, I share six reflections. In this increasingly secular context, where many have lost a sense of the sacred, I have had to reassess what I believe about God, and this has involved a redrawing of my picture of God.

The picture we have of God has a direct impact on how we live. Over the ages, so many atrocities have been committed in the name of God. As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr asserts, ‘we become like the God we worship’. Raised in a conservative, Afrikaansspeaking church in South Africa, God was always a vengeful, angry being, who controls events from up there somewhere. While such a theistic understanding of God may have been helpful at the beginning of my journey of faith, it leaves too many glaring contradictions and unanswered questions to sustain a healthy spirituality. Most of us know, or at least have a sense, that God must be something different than an old man in the sky.

In trying to make sense of God, it is important to remember that theism, this view of a God out there somewhere, is a human construction. God, by definition, is always beyond definition! Any language we use in speaking about God is only metaphor – it points to what is beyond itself. No words or picture of God will ever be sufficient to contain the Great Mystery that is God.

For many people, the end of the theistic picture of God is the end of faith, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Letting go of this view of God has taken me a while, but it has been so liberating. One of the best things in opening myself up to alternative views of God has been the freedom that this has brought. When God is no longer that old man in the sky, we start to encounter God in all sorts of unexpected ways, in unexpected places, and through people we least expect.

We can then start seeing God as the source of all life, and we worship this God by living; God as the source of all love, and we worship God by loving; God as the ground of our being, and we worship God by having courage to be all that we can be.

As we expand or redraw our picture of God, we embrace new understandings of God and open ourselves up to new experiences of God. What an adventure! May each of us get a sense of God in ourselves, in others, all around us.

1 Kirk@scotch is a 30-minute service, on the first and third Saturdays in term, from 5-5.30pm. Based on the format of services at the Taize Community in France, a team of Scotch boys and PLC girls lead the chants.

Kirk dates for the rest of the year: April 20th, May 4th and 18th, Aug 3rd, Sept 7th, October 19th, Nov 2nd, 16th and 30th. All are welcome.