Naming God on Our Own Terms

Day 1 of 3: Where Have You Come From?

Genesis 16:7-8, 13 (NIV)
The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

Sometimes I feel like Christianity is a gift that someone gave me, but that someone doesn’t know me very well. The language I grew up with to describe God was always masculine and heteronormative — He, a patriarch, a bunch of metaphors for physical strength, and so on.

God was presented to me as someone who cared for me, but also wasn’t reflective of me or my needs. The images of God that I was given weren’t just encouraged, but insisted upon. Any characteristic or name for God that didn’t fit my conservative church’s prescribed standards was considered secular (aka wrong).

Once when I was a teenager, I mildly suggested to my minister cousin that God could also be considered female, and she started quoting Revelations at me: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book” (Revelations 22:18, KJV).

In other words, coming up with different terms or alternative images for God made you deviant and hell-bound. These reactions were nothing but the suppression of anything unfamiliar, disguised as spiritual guidance.

I think about the slave Hagar — pregnant, stuck in a sweltering desert, running away from abusive owners. I wonder what stories she heard about her master’s God and miracles that God performed. I wonder if Hagar hesitated to name God because she was unsure whether she could be a part of any divine plans. She must’ve heard the names her masters used for God and how those masters would curse her in the same breath.

But maybe it took her time to come up with a name for God. Maybe she saw through the hypocrisy that people with privilege passed off as religion, and she saw her opportunity to write herself into that story.

What common names have you heard others use for God? Have any of those names impacted your relationship with God or your spirituality? Why or why not?

Chavonn Shen

Day 1 of 3: Where Have You Come From?

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