God in Our Image

I have often struggled with perfectionism—the desire to “get it all right” by whatever elusive religious standard may be present, real or imagined—because I was afraid of what would happen if I got anything wrong. This is a trauma response, I now realize, that had been beaten into me beginning at the age of two (see my short bio, “The House that Jesus Built“), and the more I come to understand and to be filled with the Love of God, the less I feel this way. But while the Spirit of God has helped me integrate all the dissociated parts of me with the help of my Guides and the Angels, sometimes it seems as if a part of me pops back up, filled with emotions such as doubt or fear or cynicism or frustration, and with plenty of questions.

It’s all part of the process as I deconstruct and rebuild my faith, so rather than ignore these emotions (dissociate from them, in other words), I have learned to acknowledge them as being a sign that I am in need of something, such as assurance or peace or answers. I embrace my emotions as being the impetus for greater growth, healing, and understanding, often going to my Spirit Guides to have a conversation with them about the questions or feelings, as mundane or as silly as they might seem to be.

It’s all part of the growth process.

So some time back, I asked Jesus a question about prayer.

Prayer itself is broad concept and there are many reasons why we pray, including communication, grounding, surrender, request, alignment, etc. But I had a specific question that I posed to Jesus, and I wrote about the interaction in my journal the best as I was able to hear, see, and understand:

I asked Jesus last night about prayer. Obviously prayer is important, because he taught about prayer, specifically the “Our Father” prayer, but if we pray to “Father,” isn’t that just making God—the Source, the Ineffable, the Unknown—in our image of what we believe “Father” to be? And that isn’t God. We are made in God’s image, not the other way around, right? But the same thing happens if we pray to “Mother,” or to “Spirit,” or to whatever Saint or to Angels or to any other image or idea. Any name, title, or idea in any religion: what, truly, is the point of prayer if the One we are praying to is Unknowable? Can we ever get it right?

Jesus took me by the hand and led me into the garden beside the house he built for me and showed me one of the trees there. He picked a fruit and I saw it was an orange. He peeled the fruit and placed the segments in my hand. Then he picked a segment and opened it and pulled out a seed. He told me that the tree produces the fruit, the fruit bears seed, and the seed holds within it a tree; it’s all the same essence.

“We can call it a Tree, or a Seed, or a Fruit, or even a piece of a Fruit,” Jesus said, “but we are speaking of the same essence that gives and nurtures life. The same with God: Father is but one way to speak of this Eternal Essence.”

They were such simple words to explain something I already knew in my head, but the way Jesus spoke them to me helped me understand the concept in my heart.

Later, Balthazar gave more insight: yes, we make God into our image because that is how we relate to the idea of God. This is why Jesus spoke of praying to “Father,” so people could understand. And it’s why Jesus spoke of a “good father” being like our Heavenly Father, because some people’s idea of “father” is not very good at all. But making God into our image isn’t where we should remain.

It is where we all start, and if the intention of the heart is to communicate with God, then any expression of that communication is okay: any words are acceptable, any prayer is acceptable, any expression is acceptable. We are acceptable. But the image is not where we should remain. God is beyond any image or description.

Peace and Blessings on your Faith journey,