Anthropomorphism

I asked my daughter the other day how the tires of her stroller got covered in mud and her response was, “Bob (the stroller is made by “Baby On Board” and has always been known as Bob) likes the mud.” Having a name is one thing, but having likes and dislikes is something new and it made me think of all the ways that we anthropomorphize things. Perhaps the objects we most often ascribe human traits to are our cars, but if we really think about it, we do it with all sorts of things. “The washing machine is acting up.” “I think my computer is mad at me.” People give names to their guitars (B. B. King’s “Lucille” is one of the more famous examples of this) and have quasi love affairs with their instruments. There are commercials running where people have conversations with their bed or their car after traveling, we have talking geckos, dancing peanuts (complete with top hat and monocle) and any number of other things we animate and make like us. In a manner of speaking you could say that it is an attempt at relationalism in the sense that we are personifying these things so that we can relate to them by seeing them in our own image.

From a faith perspective we do the same thing with God as well, limiting God and trying to comprehend things from within the scope of our own understanding. It is one thing to think in theanthropic terms seeing the divine in the human and the qualities and attributes, which are both, but it is another thing entirely when we create God in our image instead of the other way around. For Christians, both Jesus himself and Paul pushed us to see the divine in each other and showed us that as we relate to each other we relate to God, but they were both careful not to limit God into only being seen in us. Again, it is a relational thing in a sense of trying to understand God better by quantifying God in human terms, but as I often quote one of my favorite theologians, Nicholas of Cusa said, “If we could understand everything about God, God would not be so impressive as God.”

It makes sense and being able to relate is something special. Feeling like you know God better because of any way that you feel you can relate is probably a good thing. There is something to be said though in our ability or inability to relate to things that are not like us. We should be able to relate without having to make them like us. We should be able to see something as different and understand that that’s okay. In terms of god we need to accept that we don’t get to know everything. On the other hand, maybe Bob really does like the mud and what do I know.