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The Ideal God
By Bob Murray, PhD
As a psychologist I was very interested in an article in USA TODAY (9 September '06) about how Americans view God. Four distinct impressions emerged about perceptions of the essential character of the divine.
About 31.5% see their god as "authoritarian," 24.5% as "distant," 23% as "benevolent," and 16% as "critical." The researchers then break this down into regions: for example if you live in the South you have a 43.5% chance of seeing God as authoritarian, but if you live in California He (or She or It) is more likely to be viewed as either benevolent or distant (a creative force who plays no part in the affairs of the creation).
Obviously no god, or person, can be all these things at once so the descriptions probably mirror something else besides the character of the Divine. Maybe these descriptions imply something about the human family, about how we've been treated in childhood, perhaps by our fathers.
That we inherit our view of God from our parents is not entirely a new observation, but what the research seems to be saying is that the relationship between family and theology may more complex than that. We can inherit the general world-view of a Southern Baptist from our parents, but, as the researchers found, Southern Baptists can see their god as either authoritarian or benevolent. Indeed the Baptist may have more in common in the personality traits she ascribes to God with a local Jew than with other members of her own congregation.
Interestingly even atheists can see the universe in these general personality terms. They may substitute "the unwavering laws of science" for an "authoritarian god" or the "harmony of the natural order" for a "benevolent deity" but, it seems to me, the ideas are the same. Both are probably reflecting some dominant factor in their upbringing.
"Authoritarian," "distant," "benevolent" or "critical" are terms a psychologist or psychotherapist hears every day about parents, and, in particular, fathers. These terms seem to have little to do with a parent's denomination or faith or lack of either. They are used equally by offspring of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, people of all creeds. They refer to attitudes and behaviors which ideals (parents are always ideals to their young children no matter how good or bad they are as parents) exhibited in the person's childhood.
This idealization of particular personality characteristics is attached to the deity, which is a complicated way of saying that if God is an ideal and Daddy is an ideal they must be pretty much like each other. A Catholic who sees his god as authoritarian may convert to Lutheranism or Islam without changing his idea of the characteristics of the deity. He may even become a communistic atheist and adhere to the belief in an authoritarian state!
My mother was an atheist, my father a pantheist (one who believes that the divine is in all things) and both were well-meaning and highly-creative alcoholics. My upbringing was pretty laissez-faire, almost neglectful (thank the Lord for my nanny!). Following these criteria you might take a pretty good guess at the way I might view the divine. If you were to put me in the "God-as-distant" category with a tinge of "God as benevolent" you'd be right. It might be an interesting exercise in self-discovery to do with yourself and your friends.
None of this, of course, is relevant to the larger question as to whether God exists or not. Whether we are a product of divine thought or the divine is a figment of ours is a matter for faith not psychology or even science. The neural mechanism through which we experience spirituality is increasingly well known (and set out in some detail in our book Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004). Now, perhaps, we're close to getting a more robust idea of the psychological mechanism by which we tend to ascribe particular characteristics to the Divine.
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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