Imaging God as Lover, not Lord

I led a workshop at the FGC Gathering in Colorado in which we explored some exciting ways of imaging and understanding God.  During the first two sessions, I drew upon two books by one of my favorite theologians, Sallie McFague: Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (1988), and The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (1993).

McFague starts with a critique of the old, “monarchical model” of God as king or lord, which she finds not only unbelievable but also deeply destructive for our time.  She cites three major flaws of the monarchical model: “…God is distant from the world, relates only to the human world, and controls the world through domination and benevolence” (Models of God:. 65).  This is a very authoritarian, top-down model which describes God as being “over” humans, and the created world as existing for the pleasure of (and exploitation by) one species only--we humans.

She suggests three alternative models: God as Mother, God as Friend, and God as Lover.  I particularly like the implications of understanding God as lover.  Says McFague:

We speak of God as love but are afraid to call God lover.  But a God who relates to all that is, not distantly and bloodlessly, but intimately and passionately, is appropriately called lover.  God as lover is the one who loves the world, not with the fingertips, but totally and passionately, taking pleasure in its variety and richness, finding it attractive and valuable, delighting in its fulfillment.  God as lover is the moving power of love in the universe, the desire for unity with all the beloved…(Models: 130)

This helps me understand the joy I feel in my experiences of beauty in God’s stunning creation. This underlies the powerful feeling of unity with all parts of the world which comes over me in my deepest experiences of the Spirit!  I am filled with love because, whatever God “is,” God is passionate, joyful love.

She goes on to note that, in this model of God, sin is not disobedience to a superior being, but separation from  “our lover God” and all that God has created and goes on loving.  And “salvation is the reunification of the beloved world with its lover, God” (Models: 139).”

In addition to resonating with my experience of the Spirit, this understanding of God provides a foundation for social and political action with and on behalf of all parts of creation: human, animal, vegetable and mineral.  The ravaging of our Earth for our material gain is now seen as enormously selfish and destructive of our relationship with our love and lover, God. 

I will expand on this further in my next post  in which I will explore an understanding of the earth as “God’s body.”