Analogies are powerful mental tools to understand the world and have a strong influence on our thoughts and beliefs. We should be careful to understand that an analogy is necessarily limited and cannot provide a complete understanding, but at the same time they are unavoidable for approaching otherwise mysterious topics such as our relationship with God.
A common analogy for God's relationship with us throughout the parables of Jesus is that of a father to child. For example, see the well-known parable of the prodigal son. Other common analogies include God as master or as property-owner.
An unfortunate effect of the father and master analogies is that they suggest a view of God as a powerful patriarch figure. Why did Jesus choose these analogies instead of using a mother analogy? Perhaps Jesus did and these were not recorded in the Bible, or perhaps he thought such analogies would be rejected by his audience.
As science and philosophy have advanced, so too have our range of experience and ideas. Religion also ought to advance as we understand more about the world and can use this understanding to inform our views of God and our place in the world. In particular, new theories and ideas can provide the means for better analogies with respect to God.
One such analogy was provided by biology over the past several centuries and gives what I believe is a far superior analogy than any available in the time of Jesus. This is the body-cell analogy, where the relationship of God to each of us is said to be like the relationship between each of us and our bodily cells. In other words, we are all like cells in the body of God.
A cell lives within a body but responds to its environment as an individual, giving the appearance of some degree of creativity and self-determination. I would suggest that this is not just appearance but actual creativity and that the cell has some aspect of mentality. Furthermore, the many cells in your body combine to exert the central influence on your own experience, and you in turn influence the experience of the cells. This mind-body relationship is one-to-many and is one of intimacy (often mistaken as identity). Charles Hartshorne remarks, "What is pain, some of us wonder, if not our participation in cellular damage or discomfort?" (Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 55)
The body-cell analogy suggests a relationship of mutual influence with God. Hartshorne describes it further: "God's cosmic body is a society of individuals, not a single individual. The world as an integrated individual is not a 'world' as this term is normally and properly used, but 'God'. God, the World Soul, is the individual integrity of 'the world', which otherwise is just the myriad creatures. As each of us is the super-cellular individual of the cellular society called a human body, so God is the super-creaturely individual of the inclusive creaturely society. Simply outside of this super-society and super-individual, there is nothing."
I believe the largest shortcoming of this analogy is that it does not emphasize the degree to which God may experience what we as individuals experience. That is, you cannot isolate individual cells in you body but rather experience the cumulative effects of many cells. However, I do like the analogy in that it points us in the direction of viewing God as a sympathetic participant in our lives, one who experiences what we experience; suffers what we suffer. In addition, we each influence God in a meaningful (though almost trivial) way through our feelings and actions, and in some way we each receive influence from God.
A common analogy for God's relationship with us throughout the parables of Jesus is that of a father to child. For example, see the well-known parable of the prodigal son. Other common analogies include God as master or as property-owner.
An unfortunate effect of the father and master analogies is that they suggest a view of God as a powerful patriarch figure. Why did Jesus choose these analogies instead of using a mother analogy? Perhaps Jesus did and these were not recorded in the Bible, or perhaps he thought such analogies would be rejected by his audience.
As science and philosophy have advanced, so too have our range of experience and ideas. Religion also ought to advance as we understand more about the world and can use this understanding to inform our views of God and our place in the world. In particular, new theories and ideas can provide the means for better analogies with respect to God.
One such analogy was provided by biology over the past several centuries and gives what I believe is a far superior analogy than any available in the time of Jesus. This is the body-cell analogy, where the relationship of God to each of us is said to be like the relationship between each of us and our bodily cells. In other words, we are all like cells in the body of God.
A cell lives within a body but responds to its environment as an individual, giving the appearance of some degree of creativity and self-determination. I would suggest that this is not just appearance but actual creativity and that the cell has some aspect of mentality. Furthermore, the many cells in your body combine to exert the central influence on your own experience, and you in turn influence the experience of the cells. This mind-body relationship is one-to-many and is one of intimacy (often mistaken as identity). Charles Hartshorne remarks, "What is pain, some of us wonder, if not our participation in cellular damage or discomfort?" (Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 55)
The body-cell analogy suggests a relationship of mutual influence with God. Hartshorne describes it further: "God's cosmic body is a society of individuals, not a single individual. The world as an integrated individual is not a 'world' as this term is normally and properly used, but 'God'. God, the World Soul, is the individual integrity of 'the world', which otherwise is just the myriad creatures. As each of us is the super-cellular individual of the cellular society called a human body, so God is the super-creaturely individual of the inclusive creaturely society. Simply outside of this super-society and super-individual, there is nothing."
I believe the largest shortcoming of this analogy is that it does not emphasize the degree to which God may experience what we as individuals experience. That is, you cannot isolate individual cells in you body but rather experience the cumulative effects of many cells. However, I do like the analogy in that it points us in the direction of viewing God as a sympathetic participant in our lives, one who experiences what we experience; suffers what we suffer. In addition, we each influence God in a meaningful (though almost trivial) way through our feelings and actions, and in some way we each receive influence from God.
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