This came up on another discussion. I and others there had definite ideas/feelings about this, more than we could really clarify there; and I'd like to have this considered as deeply as possible.
*****People make images of their friends, their lovers, their very selves. And they make images of God. Making "a false image of God" is a seemingly inevitable result of "trying to make a true image of God."
After making an initial image, you go on having experiences with the actual person hidden behind it. But you might go on looking at the image, and fail to recognize the person. How you treat him, how he reacts may well be influenced by that.*****
Friend Forest, this makes most excellent sense to me.
I was for many years "the wife" to someone, and it became quite clear to me that for all his good intentions he had no idea who I was/am. His image of what "the wife" is was so thick and solid that he could not see ME, and any way in which I differed from his preconcieved notion was one more way in which I was not good enough.
Certainly we do this with God, and with God's presence in the world, so that when someone feels led to do something that differs from our idea of what we think God requires or approves we readily assume they are misled by something other than God. Or they are misinterpreting God.
And of course they likely think the same of us.
No cure for it, I suppose, except to keep listening and trying to get our own vision clear.
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