The Good Enough God

Before I sound blasphemous, let me explain.
Throughout my time at Truman, I have gotten very interested in the psychology of religion. More broadly, God has posed this question to me: What is authentic religion? What is the kingdom of God like, or what shall we compare it to? Psychology of religion is a key piece of that puzzle. It helps me uncover disordered, unhealthy spirituality in myself, in others, and historically and institutionally. I'm not the only one with occasionally neurotic faith. It's every Christian who at least once has, for example, related to God as a wrathful primal father instead of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
I think struggling with the question of what true religion is, is a biblically mandated act of discernment. And it's essential to the vocation of the clergy and the laity. Paul (or pseudo-Paul, if we're putting on our historical criticism hats) tells young pastor Titus, "You, however, must teach what accords with sound teaching." The Greek word "sound" means "healthy." Pastors are called to teach the healthy gospel, not neurotic, psychodynamically conditioned distortions. And laity are called to critically evaluate the health of the teachings advanced by their pastors and the health of their own religiosity.
That was a long intro to a more interesting idea-- the good-enough God. D.W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst, is best-known for his contributions to the field of object-relations. Transitional objects can be anything-- the mother's breast (classically the first transitional object), the baby blanket, other people, a book or movie, even God-- that mediates between the "me" and the "not-me." It's a realm of play, developing the self and relationships. The baby initially doesn't know objects. The baby is his whole world, her hunger and thirst and wet diaper all that exists, and the mother an extension of himself. The baby learns that when she cries, the mother comes and fulfills every need, making the mother both merged with his psyche and indulging "the illusion of omnipotence," as Winnicott says. The baby sees the mother as under his control instead of an authentic object in her own right. This is necessary for the baby to become securely attached to the mother, and to more broadly develop a sense of their own security and self-esteem. But growing up means leaving behind the illusion of omnipotence. The solution is for the mother to a be a "good enough mother," continuing to care for the infant but gradually declining to cater to every demand and thereby slowly breaking the illusion of omnipotence. The baby, of course, doesn't like this process much. The baby has to try to destroy the mother, lash out against her, to slowly prove to himself that she is a separate being from him who cannot be destroyed by him. This is the crucial point: the baby must try but fail to destroy her mother.
Of course, the mother is not the only object. God, as some articles I read point out, is also an object. And when we are spiritual infants, God coddles us, and often we hold illusions of omnipotence, thinking we are in charge of God. I see this in my own spiritual life. When I was a new Christian, I had many mystical experiences of God's closeness. I remember lying on my bed, in the first house we lived in at Virginia Beach when I was eleven years old, reading John 15 and literally weeping for joy. I had other experiences like that too, that drew me deeper into relationship with God. I began to believe, even if I wouldn't consciously articulate it that way at the time, that God was at my beck and call. I asked God over and over for warm and fuzzy experiences of his presence. "Come close to me, God!" I would pray. And sometimes God obliged. But more and more often, he didn't. God was and is destroying my illusions of omnipotence. This is what it means for God to be a "good enough" God-- taking care of us without infantalizing us, giving us meat instead of milk.
And correspondingly, we try and fail to destroy God. Winnicott's framework explains some of the resisting of God we see in Scripture. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" "Oh God, you enticed me, and I was enticed... But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name,' there is within me a burning fire shut up in my bones" (that little gem is from Jeremiah 20; the Hebrew for "enticed" actually means "rape) "Oh Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me? Wretched and close to death, I suffer your terrors wherever I turn" (Psalm 88, the most intense lament in all of Scripture, in my opinion) "He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me to sit in darkness."
I would argue on one level all of these folks are lashing out at God by saying these apparently blasphemous things. They are attacking God, trying to destroy him, and each learns God can't be defeated, pushed aside, annihilated. We are maturing when we try to destroy God. This is the story of Jacob, who wrestles with God, who demands, "Tell me your name!" Tell me that you are real, tell me that you are something outside of my mind. "I won't let you go until you bless me!" Jacob shouts at the Angel of the Lord. I won't let go of you until you give me what you want, until you give into my demands, until you validate me as the center of my universe. And God, mercifully, blesses him in the wrestling, through the struggle miraculously confirms God's existence. This has been true in my own life. Reading Winnicott and some decidedly more spiritual interpreters of Winnicott really was insightful into my spirituality. I certainly have raged against God-- and in the raging learned that God was beyond my control, and learned to live with the understanding that God is outside of my own mind. And I'm fairly stuck in my own head at times, and it's easy to think God is just another idea running around my mind, instead of the living Lord. God's withdrawal and my own unwitting attempts to destroy God, in the Winnicott-ian sense, bring me closer to the living Lord.
As Thomas Merton said, "God, who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet he seems sometimes to be present, sometimes absent... Those who love only his apparent presence cannot follow the Lord wherever he goes."
A few caveats-- God's withdrawing is balanced by times of God's presence-- hence the phrase "good enough." Jesus says he is with the disciples always, then ascends into heaven.  Jesus himself is declared God's Beloved, and then the Spirit whisks him into the wilderness. But I still believe this withdrawal is in terms of our sensing. Jesus sent us the Paraclete, to draw alongside us forever, but sometimes the Spirit's ministry weans us off warm and fuzzy feelings. Also, the anger at God, the efforts to destroy, are not the same as sinful rebellion-- although they can overlap. The psalmists and Jeremiah and the rest don't really hate God, and they don't really want to leave God. They are still, in a primitive and real sense, children of the Mother/Father God.
And a final important caveat-- it's easy to apply psychoanalysis of religion for reductive ends. Any theory can do no more than help our understanding. God, and for that matter our own messy souls, cannot be locked into rigid theories. If we try, in some ways we are merely caught in illusions of omnipotence, deluded that God is, even if we wouldn't consciously admit that we think this, a figment of our own minds instead of an independent Lord. Recently when on a wonderful road trip with friends, we were talking about some verses in the gospels and I blurted out, "Jesus is so Wesleyan!" They gently laughed at me and one said, "Haven't you got that backwards?" I certainly did. We can't trap God with theological, or for that matter, any other kinds of paradigms.
Wesley, speak of the devil, talked about the notion of assurance. God assures us of our status as God's children. And one way God does it is by paradoxically destroying our illusions of omnipotence, so we come to understand grace comes truly from without, a power beyond our control, untamed and incapable of our destruction.
Glory and honor to our good-enough God!