When Man Created God in his own Image

I am no theologian, but it occurs to me that we have taken our faith backwards in the millennia since it was revealed to us in full. When the temple’s curtain was rended at the moment of Christ’s death on that Crucifixion Friday, our belief was stripped down to its barest and most essential. A faith which was accessible to all. From that moment on, though, we have been doing what we do best – to reconstruct the encrustations that take our faith away from such a simple understanding. We became besotted with ritual, ceremony and rites. We re-inserted brokers between God and ourselves.

And thus did simple faith turn into complex religion. Especially as sets of beleaguered believers became the religion of the realm, the priesthood and their ever more complex rituals became the buttressing factor for temporal political power. And this is true not just of Christianity, but also of Islam. What started as an insurgent faith quickly became the state religion, tasked not only with spiritual matters but also with secular power. All too often, this religion was asked to endorse and justify the messy political, social and economic choices necessary when human beings live together in polities. When these political, social and economic choices led down a moral cul-de-sac, the multiple layers of doctrine that had been built up over hundreds of years could easily be used as a map out of the dead end. There was always a verse in the Bible, the Qur’an or even the Bhagavad Gita that could justify slavery, or murder, or treating other humans as lesser beings.

If we look at Christianity, the faith I know best (but I suspect similar impulses are to be found in other faiths), we seem to want contradictory incarnations of God: the Supreme Being whose works are too mysterious to behold, let alone understand; but also One who is as invested in the petty arguments of life as we are, perhaps even more so. A God who speaks through the spiritual realm, but also One who is concerned with what piercings we have on our bodies, whether this energy drink or that rock band could be the portal to Hell. We wrestle this God and bring him down to our level, so that he can intervene in and take sides on a political or sporting contest (although I suspect that He tipped the scales in that World Cup final in 1995). We invoke Him and fervently believe that He has an opinion on a dispute at work, or an argument with a neighbour.

We have God-as-amulet – to be brought out in the little inconveniences of life. Late for an important meeting and traffic is uncooperative? Say a quick prayer in the honest faith that God will come down and intervene in the Mombasa Road gridlock.

We have God-as-Aesthete-in-Chief. Two inches in a skirt’s length are the subject of a heated theological discussion. Of course, we think, God frowns upon, or conversely doesn’t care, about whether a woman’s knees are visible when she wears a garment.

We have God-as-tribesmate. This God loves those we love, and hates those we hate. Our deeply-held prejudices are His deeply-held prejudices; so much so that it is necessary for us to help Him along with His divine work. Should we believe that this God declares the smiting of the unbeliever, we shall undertake to do this smiting ourselves. Should we believe that a particular set of people is undesirable – darkies, homosexuals, unwed mothers – we project their undesirability to that God. As a matter of fact, we use some logical jiu-jitsu to claim that it is that God Himself who has commanded our prejudice, and not us who have commanded that prejudice on Him.

What we have then is, if not a God of small things, then a God of small thinking. A God caught in the weeds of our humdrum reasoning and petty prejudices. But because it is God we are talking about, we then construct on this conception of Him some elaborate superstructure full of mysterious language and esoteric doctrine. When we truly want to hide the fact that this conception of God only exists to serve our all-too-human purposes, and that it is obvious even to a casual observer that this God of small thinking does not match up to the true God – an awesome Being whose love and authority are evident and obvious; a God who doesn’t need to be interpreted for us because He Himself, in that one act at the Crucifixion, told us that we could come to Him ourselves, directly and without fear. A God who asked us to be like small children, pure and innocent. A God who speaks plainly and clearly, and who does not use hate to pronounce love; does not use mystery to pronounce clarity; does not use bigotry to pronounce brotherhood – we then proclaim that this God can only be understood by a select few. We proclaim that this God does not speak our language, but a spiritual language only accessible to a new priesthood.

We have thus done something remarkable. We have paid God the ultimate, ironic compliment. God created man in his own image – awesome, big-hearted and full of love. Man has created God in his own image – small, chauvinistic and bigoted.