27 Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods -- August 3, 2020

Episode 27.   Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods – August 3, 2020

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis:  Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.   We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms than we were before.  I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski your host and guide, with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com.  Thank you for being here with me.  This is episode 27, released on August 3, 2020 and the title is Robber Gods, Aristocrat Gods and Marshmallow Gods.

For those of you who are new to the podcast, first of all, a very hearty welcome to you, I’m glad you’re joining us.  I want you to know that each episode can stand alone, and I will provide you with the background you need to understand each episode.  However, if you want more of a conceptual background for God images, check out episodes 22, 23, and 24.    

Brief review:  let’s just circle back around and review, what are God images again? 

My God image is my experiential sense of God it’s how my heart sees God, what my feelings tell me about God.  My God image is very subjective, it doesn’t necessarily follow what I know about God in my head.  My God image is formed out of the relational experiences I’ve had.  Different God images can be activated at different times, depending on my emotional states and what psychological mode I am in at any given time.  So what’s important to remember is that your God images are not necessarily what you profess to believe with your intellect.  Rather, they are the unfiltered, spontaneous, uncensored, gut-felt sense of God in the moment.

Similarly, my self-images are much more driven by emotion, much more intuitive, subjective, and they vary a lot more from moment to moment.  My self-image is who I feel myself to be in a given moment, it is who my passions are telling me that I am in the moment.  Self-images go together with God images – they impact each other.  

In the last two episodes, episode 25 and 26, we looked at a total of six different negative God images originally identified by Christian psychotherapists Bill and Kristi Gaultiere in their 1989 book Mistaken Identities.  Those were the Drill Sergeant God, the Statue God, the preoccupied managing director God, Unjust Dictator God, the Vain Pharisee God, and the Critical Scrooge God.  

I do want you to know that I’m going beyond their initial conceptualizations and adding much more in these podcast episodes, most of it derived from my clinical experience and also my own experience in my journey with God.  So I just want you to know that I am adding a lot of new material, but I do think their initial pioneering work really deserves to be credited.

All right, so let’s go to listener questions.  Ryan from Texas has this question:

“After identifying problematic God images in my own life, I want to know how deterministic God images are.  Are they imprinted from childhood or do they change with time?  And what we do to make our God images align with the loving and caring God we profess to know in our God concept?”

Great question, Ryan.  Let’s get into that just briefly right now, and I will say much more about it in future podcast episodes.  I also very much want to do a much more in-depth course at Souls & Hearts on God images, particularly how to respond to them, and also how to bring them into greater harmony with who God really is.  

That’s one measure of mental health, is when our God images reflect the reality of our loving and caring God.  So if you are interested in a course like that, let me know.  Once I have 25 people that would be committed to a much more in-depth course, and would be willing to pay for it, I could begin to set aside the time to create it.  If you’re interested in that, call me or text me at 317-567-9594 or email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and let me know, and I put you on the list.  

So back to Ryan’s question Initially, God images are formed in us from our first days.  Even as infants, we are learning about the world and nonverbal assumptions are being formed in us.  Imagine an infants, I will call him baby Joe, who has an attuned, psychologically healthy mother who can really enter into the baby’s experience.  The mother is able to intuit what the baby needs, and meet those needs in a loving, competent way.  The baby has a sense of being seen and known, and also has safety and security, which are the first to conditions of secure attachment.  This sets the baby up to have a greater sense of safety and security, a greater sense of being seen and known by God.

Contrast that baby’s experience with another, who I will call baby Tom, whose father recently divorced his mother.  Baby Tom’s mother is stressed out, having to reenter the workforce, feeling a deep sense of shame and abandonment, and is struggling with depression and anxiety.  Unconsciously, baby Tom’s mother blames baby Tom for driving away her husband.  This is going to have a huge impact on baby Tom’s sense of being seen and known, of being safe and secure.

So it’s clear that baby Joe and baby Tom are going to have different starting points with regard to their God images.  The impact of parents’ ways of relating with children is difficult to underestimate when it comes to the generation of children’s God images.  Nevertheless, and this is very important, there is another factor that has an even greater impact on what the ultimate God images are.  And that, my dear listeners is what is our experience of the actual living God.  These God images that are formed in us beyond our control will change over time, if we bring ourselves into contact with God really is.  The reason that so many God images seem to be so sticky, they seem to hang around so much, is because they have not yet been corrected by God.  Sometimes God delays correcting these God images, to draw us into deeper relationship with him.  Other times though, we refuse to allow God into our lives in a way that would help us see and know who he really is.  We default to our negative God images and we don’t invite him into our lives.  And there are reasons for that, and will get into those in future episodes.  For now, Ryan, I want you and the rest of the listeners to know that the way we engage with the living God, as he is, the way we allow him into our lives into relationship with us – that is going to have much more of an impact on our God images over time than our original upbringing.

So our God images can and should change over time.  As we deepen in the spiritual life, as we deepen our relationship with God, our God images will conform more to our God concept, which will conform more to who God really is.

Ok, with that, let’s dive into the three God images we are reviewing today, these are the Robber God, the Elite Aristocrat God, and the Marshmallow God.  

Robber God:  This God robs me of good things, and prevents me from having good fortune. He...