Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
June 15, 2014
By Fr. Mike O’Brien ©
Which of these four categories describes your personal image of God?
#1.
An authoritarian and angry God, who is highly involved in daily life and world affairs.
#2.
A benevolent God, who is active in peoples’ daily lives in a positive way.
#3.
A critical God, who is displeased with the current state of the world, and who will mete out
justice in the afterlife.
#4.
A distant God, who is not active in daily life and is not especially angry either, but is more of a
“cosmic friend.”
These four categories were taken from a National Survey, conducted by Baylor Universities’ Institute
for studies of Religion. Their research showed that “your image of God” affects your life’s choices.
When I was a child my predominant image of God was “a critical God” whose primary job was that of
Judge. Experiencing God as a judge affected my life choices; let me give you a few examples:
#1 I went to Church, not because I wanted to but I didn’t want to go to hell. I wanted a good
judgment by the Judge.
#2 I did good works in order to balance the bad things I had done. [Justice – a “balance scale”]
#3 I went to confession, not to be holy but to get clean in order to get dirty again. My image of
God affected the way I saw and practiced my Faith! Does that make sense?
Because I saw God as a judge I rarely ever experienced the love of God; I experienced mostly his
judgmental stare and heaps and heaps of guilt! As a teen, my image of God began to change towards a
benevolent God who was more like a “doting Grandparent” who loved to “spoil” their grandchildren
because their parents were too strict. The 60’s had something to do with that!
Because I began to see God as an over indulging grandparent, I didn’t have to say my prayers every
day because God as grandparent would understand. My ethics and morality were no longer concerned
with the letter of the law but my interpretation of the law!
From time to time these two predominant images of God clashed. Looking back at my two major
images of God and seeing how they affected my behavior I would definitely agree with the Survey’s
insight that our image of God affects our life’s choices! I began to wonder which of these four
categories, which of these four images would Jesus choose in describing His primary image of God. Did
Jesus see God as:
Authoritarian and angry?
Benevolent?
Critical? or
Distant?
Which one do you think Jesus would have chosen? Survey says: “NONE OF THEM!” That’s the
problem I have with the survey. None of those images reflect the Image of God that Jesus came to
reveal. Where did the polsters get their images for the Survey? Surely not from Jesus.
Because our image of God is so fundamental to our discipleship; because our image of God affects all
our life’s choices, it is important for us to know and understand Jesus’ image of God.
Did you notice in our second reading that St. Paul got the order of the Trinity backwards? He writes
to the Corinthian Church in his second letter: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God
and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Why did he put Jesus ahead of the Father?
WHY? Because we only get to know God as Father through the Son and we only get to know God as
Holy Spirit through the Son. Let me repeat that. Because we only get to know God as Father through
the Son and we only get to know God as Holy Spirit through the Son.
What kind of God does Jesus reveal? This is fundamental Friends. Jesus reveals God as: Father,
Abba/Papa. “I and the Father are one.” Jesus reveals God as: Holy Spirit. He breathed on them and
said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus reveals God as Son!
What is terribly wrong with the Survey’s four categories is that they make the assumption that God
is Unitarian and not Trinitarian. God is bigger than the boxes we put him in.
Church, Jesus was not sent to reveal to us a God that is an authoritarian and an angry at us.
 Jesus was not sent to reveal to us a God that is benevolent and only content with our happiness.
Yes, God loves us unconditionally but God does not approve unconditionally all we do. Is God a
judge or does God judge?
 Jesus was not sent to reveal to us a God that is critical and can’t wait for judgment only. I think
God aches for those who have rejected Him. If you doubt this re-read the story of the Prodigal
Son!
 Jesus was not sent to reveal to us a God that is distant and an absent landlord. Jesus said, “I am
with you always.”
Friends, Jesus came to reveal a God that so loved the world that he gave his only Son “so that
everyone who believes in Him may not perish but might have eternal life.” Does that sound like any of
the gods in the survey?
During Discipleship Seminar I, we go into detail on just how important it is to replace our faulty
images of God with the God Jesus reveals! A major and I do mean a major breakthrough came to me
when I was 19 years old. I was teaching 4th grade CCD, 4th grade Religious Education and during one of
my classes, one of the students asked me: “Mr. O’Brien, do you believe in God?” At first this question
really upset me. How dare he ask this question. How dare he question my faith. After all, wasn’t I
teaching them about God? After I calmed down I realized that yes, I did believe in God but this 4th
graders question made me ask myself which God did I believe in?
Did I believe in a critical God? Did I believe in a benevolent God? Or was there something more?
This 4th graders question bugged me for months and motivated me not to run away from my Catholic
upbringing but to go deeper and that is when I made the rich discovery that the only true image of God
to believe in is the image Jesus came to reveal! “Those who see me, see the Father.”
Friends, our entire Catholic Christian faith is based on God as Trinity. For the first 19 years of my life I
just took God for granted until a 4th grader stopped me dead in my tracks with the question: “Mr.
O’Brien, do you believe in God?” I would like to paraphrase that question for us today. What image of
God do we believe in the gods of the survey or the God Jesus came to reveal? The feast of the Holy
Trinity and Father’s Day weekend is a great day to answer that basic question. Amen?