Humanizing God

There’s a South Park episode called “Christian Rock Hard” that mocks contemporary Christian music.  Basically, Cartman takes love songs and turns them into songs about Jesus.  It’s hilarious, because it’s mostly true!  Often, it’s hard to distinguish a secular love song from a song directed toward God.

I know personally, I used to have a really romanticized view of God.  I was reading through one of my old journals the other day, and I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by how “romantic sounding” my entries to God were!  I clung to verses like Isaiah 54:5 that states, “For your Maker is your husband…” and took them very literal.  I remember lying in bed at night and just feeling this HUGE LONGING to have Jesus hold me in his arms.  I called it a divine ache.  I used to write love notes and songs to God.  It’s great to love God, but it’s a problem to be IN love with God.  Why?  Because that’s not how our relationship to him or her is supposed to be.  I used to really struggle with the idea that God created us with needs that he himself could not meet.  For instance, we are created with sexual needs, but God alone can’t fulfill that!  I used to wonder why, why did God create us with needs he alone could not meet?

I think part of the reason I lost my faith was because I was seeking a human response to my human idea of him.  I needed advice.  I asked him.  I never “heard back.”  I’d try to be intimate with God (emotionally) and then felt so frustrated when I didn’t feel any connect.  My Christian school didn’t help combat my false thinking, however.  One night at a student meeting, they even turned the lights down and lit candles so we could “be alone with God.”  Dim the lights?  Light Candles?!  To pray?  That’s warped.

So I had all these emotions and desires and NEEDS that God wasn’t meeting.  And I didn’t know why!  Then, I fell in love with Nikki.  My human needs started being met.  I had someone to hold me.  I had someone to listen to me and give me feedback.  I had someone I could be emotionally naked with.  And likewise, I had someone to hold.  I had someone to listen to and give feedback.  I had someone being emotionally naked with me.  We both had sexual awakenings.  For the first time in my life, I experienced both emotional and physical intimacy.  It was so euphoric that I used to just lay on top of Nikki, touching every part of me to her (as much as I could), and we’d share how we wished our spirits could just come out of our bodies and collide into one.  But even without a literal spirit meshing, I still felt so connected with her.  This made what I viewed as a relationship with God SO PALE in comparison.  And I didn’t even miss God for around two years.

Thankfully, I still have a beautiful connection and intimacy with Nikki.  It’s one thing that keeps me believing in God.  But looking back, I now realize the needs Nikki meets in me were needs I was previously trying to meet through God (except the sexual needs, of course; I was so repressed in that area that I was pretty much asexual anyway).  It’s made me realize how much I had humanized God.  But you know, maybe spirituality kind of follows Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  First, your physical needs to be met.  Then, your psychological/emotional needs have to be met.  THEN, after those are met, you can reach for self-actualization, where I believe God could be found.  I wanted to understand God, but some of my physical and emotional needs were not met.  Now that they are, I have a completely different idea of God.

Perhaps now I can truly begin my search for God.  I have to put away the romanticized ideas and sappy love songs and save those for Nikki!  But even though it’s still kind of hard for me to believe, I feel like in order to truly understand myself, I must find God.  Is he deep within my spiritual core?  Is he out there on another plane?  Does he only exist in my thoughts?  Do I only exist in his?

I really appreciate the comments left on my post from yesterday.  Hearing your thoughts really helps keep me thinking, and it’s so good to realize that we are all on the same journey.

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