Letting Go of Toxic God-Images

Our Images of God Are Formed Early

Spiritual direction conversations often touch on the process of uncovering and letting go of toxic images of God that have been absorbed during life, often in childhood. In an earlier article, The Spiritual Life & Our Images of God, I explore how these images are formed and the influences that shape them.

Our images of God are not the same as our ideas or beliefs about God. Rather, they are emotionally charged inner representations — projections onto the Holy — which may or may not bear much relationship to Ultimate Reality. For example, someone may consciously believe in a loving God, yet carry a powerful inner image of a God who is judging, distant, or disappointed.

There is often a difficult psychological mirroring between distorted God-images and our sense of self. If God is imagined as vengeful or punitive, we are more likely to experience ourselves as bad or deserving of punishment. Exploring, de-contaminating, and gently healing these God-images is therefore often an important — and tender — part of the spiritual journey. These images are frequently childlike in nature and may be accompanied by shame.

I would like to spend a little time here describing one of the most common distortions I encounter in the Christian world, that of what might be termed the 'Sky-God', and also to look from a psychological perspective at how these God-images can directly relate to our early parental experience and dynamics. I find unpacking some of this with those I accompany in spiritual direction can be very insightful and liberating for people in their spiritual life and journey.

Many of us have some kind of idea about God — how we talk about God and what our concept of God is — if asked. Even atheists have a concept of God that they don't actually believe in. What is interesting is the relationship between a person's spirituality, their personality, and image of God, especially in relationship to early dynamics and family of origin, and how one's spirituality and image of God arises in this context.

How Family and Religious Authority Shape God-Images

It is well known that children, even as young as 3 years old, can have a rudimentary image of God. This is based on the way people behave in one's family of origin and images taught in Sunday School and so on. An important factor is whether the God-image you carry has been shaped by child-rearing practices that were hard and punitive, or loving and forgiving. If we have a punitive, angry parent or main care-giver then that tends to be projected on to your image of a dangerous God. If you have loving and forgiving parents, you tend to have that kind of God-image. Or you might develop a God-image that compensates for the short-comings that you had with your parents.

As well as family dynamics, we have clergy and other religious educators that can modify our image and how we think about God. A lot of religious beliefs are transmitted by culture and family, and become internalised and unconscious as a kind of felt truth. And it is not just the father-image as previously thought. Some research now suggests that one's God-image might more closely represent the characteristics of one's mother or grandmother, suggesting that our sense of the sacred can be based on early mother experiences. What is clear is that the parent that is most emotionally important to you has the largest effect on colouring your God-image.

Projecting Our Inner World onto God

'Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him,' Thomas Merton (1915-1968).

To illustrate this connection between parental experience and God-images more: if you have a very narcissistic parent you may well have a narcissistic God-image that sets high standards and demands obedience. If you have a child who has to meet his or her parents need for affirmation, if love and acceptance of your parents are conditional and you have a constant threat of withdrawal or parental abandonment, then you often have a God-image which is very insecure and where you are uncertain about the state of your relationship to the divine. If your parents were punitive and their love highly conditional, then you may have a punitive God-image where you believe that you will be punished or rewarded for certain behaviours, going to heaven or hell.

People are often drawn to God-images that reflect their psychological structures, as individual psychodynamics are projected onto God. Needless to say, one's sense of self is also radically affected by such God-representations - one is either matching-up to the desired God-image or not, and guilt and shame follow failure to do so. Realising that we project our parental images onto our God-image helps us to understand why we can develop such ambivalent God-images in our lives.

Gerald May, the well-known author, psychiatrist and spiritual director, illustrates from his own experience the importance of these early God-images in our life and spiritual development. He describes how he held on to an image of God-as-Father for many years after his father died when he was nine years old. Clinging to this image provided him with an ongoing sense of connection to his father. When he finally let go of his paternalistic God-image, May re-experienced some of the grief he had felt at the death of his father. By holding on to an image of God-as-Father, he refused to let his father die psychologically, but this also froze his relationship to God. This is an instance in which the individual's personal dynamics were radically intertwined with his God-image.

When God-Images Become Toxic

Research also suggests that one's God-image is related to self-esteem. A loving and kindly God-image tends to be associated with high esteem, presumably because one then feels worthy of God's blessing. The image we have of ourselves radically affects the way we relate to others and to the divine. People who despise themselves are more likely to imagine that they are unacceptable to God, and they may be very preoccupied with the need for forgiveness and reconciliation. Work at this level often requires time, safety, and careful listening, and is one of the areas where depth spiritual direction can be particularly helpful.

Maturing Spiritually: Letting Go of God-Images

German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart (c.1260 -c.1328) said: 'I beg God to rid me of God,' recognising the limitations of all images as being just that - only metaphors.

For those following a theistic spiritual path, as we mature psychologically, or as the intensity of our emotional difficulties softens, so our God-images also mature. We are less prone to colour our understanding of the divine with personal psychodynamic factors such as the search for a heavenly protector as a solution to chronic anxiety. The God-image will also be modified through life as our experiences confirm or deny what our religious tradition tells us. People often end up with a very private God-image — a combination of theological teaching, life experience, and childhood residuals, much of it unconscious. If the childhood image doesn't develop, God can be experienced as irrelevant as the individual matures. I have met many people who, having rejected the religion of their childhood, carry a toxic God-image and understanding of the Christian God that is frozen from their early years, believing even now in adulthood that this is a true understanding and representation of the Christian God.

Ultimately, in the mystical traditions of the Abrahamic theistic paths, the journey is to let go of all God-images and projections, recognising that none are adequate to describe divine reality. All are at best 'fingers pointing to the moon'. If positive, God-images can be very helpful stepping-stones along the way to facilitate our sense of relationship to divine Reality. It is very difficult to develop any devotional sense, or sense of relationship and surrender, to that which is ineffable and we tend to need the bridge of God-images to help us in our spiritual journey, ideally holding them in a loose rather than constricted way. But when we identify God with limited metaphors, we constrain ourselves to understanding God in a limited way, however positive. We always need to expand our images in our path until reaching the place of being able to let-go. Helpful examples of personal God-images along the way can be mother, father, lover, comrade, friend, saviour, servant, companion, shepherd, liberator. And non-personal images - thunder, rock, rain, gentle breeze, mother hen, lamb, still small voice, wind. We also need to find more inner images that speak to our experience of the God within, such as 'diamond' as our inner essence as described by St Teresa of Avila. But ultimately no image of God can sustain the reality of God who is beyond all imagery.

'Every person becomes the image of the God he or she adores' -Thomas Merton.

The ‘Sky-God’: A Particularly Persistent Distortion

One highly prevalent toxic God-image is that of the “Sky-God” — an image shaped less by Christian theology and more by ancient mythic patterns, such as the god Uranus. Here, God is imagined as “up there”, located in the luminous heavens above, while we remain below in the darkness of the earth.

In this image, God is separate from creation, not intimately involved in it. He is usually conceived as masculine, distant, and observing rather than participating. God is not experienced as dwelling within us, but rather as a kind of vast, disembodied eye in the sky — watching, assessing, offering approval or disapproval. Relationship gives way to performance; obedience replaces intimacy.

This Sky-God is often deeply patriarchal: a God who demands submission rather than mutuality, compliance rather than trust. For many people, this image becomes closely entwined with their sense of self and moral worth. God is experienced primarily as judge, and spiritual life becomes dominated by anxiety, self-surveillance, and shame — a constant fear of getting something wrong.

It is important to say that this image often persists not because people are spiritually resistant, but because it once served a purpose. A Sky-God can offer a sense of order, certainty, or safety in the midst of fear, chaos, or early insecurity. Letting go of this image can therefore feel risky, even disorientating, as it asks us to relinquish a form of control in order to move toward relationship.

Once internalised, this image can be particularly difficult to loosen without support. Because it operates at an unconscious level, it easily becomes part of a person’s identity and emotional world, perpetuating a felt sense of distance, judgement, and unworthiness. God is experienced as perpetually displeased — waiting for failure.

Yet this image stands in sharp contrast to the heart of Christian theology, which understands God as present within creation and within the human soul. As Carl Jung once observed, the great scandal of Christianity is that Christians can find God everywhere except in the human soul. A Sky-God leaves little room for an indwelling God — one who is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

Letting Go as a Spiritual Deepening

Becoming aware of these inner God-images — and gently questioning where they came from and how they continue to shape us — is often not something we can do alone. Letting go of toxic God-images is not a rejection of faith, but often a deepening of it. As our inner world becomes more conscious and less governed by fear or projection, our relationship with the divine can grow freer, more spacious, and more truthful.

This is rarely a quick or purely intellectual process. It unfolds over time, through prayer, lived experience, and careful listening to what stirs beneath the surface. For some, this journey is helped by the presence of a companion who can hold the questions with care. Spiritual direction offers a reflective and healing space in which to notice how our inner images of God have shaped us, and how they may be gently loosening. For those drawn to working more explicitly at the intersection of psychology and spirituality, my work in depth spiritual direction at the intersection of psychology and spirituality supports this kind of attentive, compassionate exploration, allowing faith to mature in ways that feel both grounded and alive.