A Conversation About Relationship
Recently, a student said to me, “I’m having a hard time with the Trinity.” I smiled, as this is probably the most common response to this lesson. Let’s face it. The Trinity is a complex doctrine, and it is actually really hard to understand.
But the student continued, “It just seems to me that if God is Triune, and therefore is in relationship with Godself, then God doesn’t need us, and I really don’t like that.”
Well, that was not the question I was anticipating. To be honest, it was also one I wanted to brush off, say something like, “Oh, but isn’t it so much better that God doesn’t need us, and so it’s even more special!” Because this is what we usually say. It’s better, or supposed to be better, that God voluntarily reaches out to us if God has no need of us.
But I also wonder if this student was pointing out a part of the Trinity that we have failed to include in our understanding of it—the part that says that God’s trinitarian nature is directly tied to the way we understand relationship with God, and importantly, relationships as a whole.
My answer to my student was rushed, and so I would like to take this opportunity to say what I wish I had said. And that is yes, it is discomforting to think that the Triune God does not need us, and yes, it can make us feel that God isn’t affected by our relationship. Yes, we have failed to correctly understand how a Triune God is necessarily connected to the Creation of that God. In times like the present one, it can also feel like God is far away, and like the lack of need by God means that we are actually alone in all of this.
But here is where different doctrines in theology connect—where the beauty of studying theology can help us see this conversation is all the interconnected ways humans have worked to be able to speak correctly of the divine.
One of the traditional understandings of the imago Dei (the image of God in humans) is the relational view. The notion that in our relationships, we image God. We mirror the way of God by loving each other. We become more like God when we’re in relationship with other people, particularly if we are trying to love and care for them as God loves and cares for us.
There’s another view, as well, called the functional view. It argues that we are like God in our actions. Specifically referencing Genesis 1:26-27, this view states that God has put us in charge of Creation care. The way God preserves the world, empowers the world to thrive, and directs the world should be mirrored in our actions. Some theologians argue that this requires us to do things like care for the poor and marginalized, to strive for more environmental concern and care in our modern contexts, and to fight oppressive and destructive actions.
I think these both give us incredible understandings of ways we can be like God, but I find they also can often leave us feeling like we must either be perfect, be superficially loving, or be domineering. Moreover, I find they can fall short of helping us understand how to model a Trinitarian God specifically. It is not only the Father we are mirroring, nor even the Son, much as the Incarnated Christ is able to instruct us on how to live. Instead, we are meant to be like a God who in God’s nature and actions is inextricably tied to relationship. To affirm the Trinity means we must understand that God is eternally interconnected and relational, and that in fact, God’s relationality is a necessary aspect of Godself precisely because God reached outside the Trinity to be relational with humans. Messy, inconsistent, difficult humans. God’s relationality is so powerful that it could not be fully contained in the safety of the Trinity. Instead, God decided to, or had to, be relational with a risk.
I believe this relational risk is where we image God. Christ, the Image of God Incarnate, risked and lost his very life in order to commune with us. God risked our rejection in creating the world. God continues to risk as God calls us to be the image on earth today. Because we are almost always quite bad at it.
We take risks to be in relationships with each other, too, but I wonder if we are also too quick to guard ourselves. We are, unfortunately, growing more and more isolated and anti-social as we attempt to limit the risks we take. In an opinion article in the Guardian, titled “We may be ‘the healthiest generation ever,’ but as I work out I wonder…would I be happier at the pub?” the author, Isabel Brooks, discusses the way current trends are focused on ‘self-care,’ but do not emphasize the need for social, relational activities. Our constant need to be productive, or to see all our actions as beneficial, makes us uncomfortable with important activities like rest or even fun and frivolity. I believe this aligns with our growing desire for safety. Rather than recognizing that true relationships require us to sacrifice things (even things that may seem good), to open ourselves up to hurt and discomfort and loss, we guard ourselves into isolation. Especially as we face current policies, events, and the constant news cycle of trauma, finding or creating and committing to a community is vital to our lives.
I am certainly not calling for us to enter into toxic relationships, or to invite people back into our lives who have been abusive. It is important to recognize the nuance in this conversation. Yet I am asking us to truly look at how we are living. Is the way we live communal? Or are we rejecting the trinitarian nature of our imago Dei? My student expressed a desire to be needed by God, and I believe this comes from a deep desire to be needed in general. And if a Triune God could possibly need us, we must certainly also need each other. Perhaps we can meet up at the pub to find out.
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