What kind of "God image" do you have?

My wife and I were on our way home from a “Pentecost Party” with friends yesterday. As we were getting on the highway, I let myself get caught up in a thought about what God has been doing in my life. My wife asked what was on my mind. And I started sharing how it feels like God has been continually stretching me and challenging me to grow. I shared how there are parts of me that, when we first started dating, really appreciated this. I took it as a sign that God was calling me forward in the way I needed. At this point, I very much feel the same. But there are parts of me that are just tired. They don’t want to keep putting in the work to grow. They want to call it quits, take a break, sit back. Having said that, the past few years have been hard. There has been a lot of ‘stretching,’ learning new skills and insights about myself, relationships, my vocation. There’s no need to deny that fact. However, these parts of me that just want to lay down for five more minutes are not seeing the whole picture. They’re not seeing what God is really doing and how He is calling me forward in maturity.

            The image of God that these parts carry seems to be that of a drill instructor: relentless, demanding, seeking out weakness to push on it. This reminds me of one of the ‘images of God’ fleshed out by Dr. Peter Malinoski, who draws them from “Mistaken Identity” by William and Kristi Gaultiere. He describes this image of God as “Always wants more and more from me. He is never satisfied and when I do not perform correctly, He is very punitive. He has no tolerance for errors. He has little mercy and compassion.”

            We come back to this sharing interaction with my wife. As I was reflecting on this, I realized that these parts of me were kicked up not just in my relationship with God. They were also inaccurately perceiving my wife’s encouragement in that same tone: demanding, relentless. It took some time to realize this and come back to my self, but in the end, it was a fruitful conversation that deepened our understanding. These are the corrective experiences we can receive that influence (positively or negatively) how we view others and their stance toward us. This is what God showed me yesterday. We are called to consistently grow in awareness, understanding, and good action, as St. Ignatius writes in his Spiritual Exercises. This not because he is a demanding God who wants to push us to the brink of exhaustion and feel inadequate, but He deeply loves us and knows that we are capable of great holiness and intimacy.

            As a resource, Dr. Peter’s handout on the distorted images of God that we can carry is very helpful. Here is the link to the article where he breaks open this idea: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/blog/are-you-a-heretic-distorted-god-images-catholics-hold. And the pdf link to the article is about halfway down.