Preconceived Images Help our Brains Perceive of a God



Why is it some people see or sense a literal god while others are unable to find it? The way a computer works gives us a way of considering this though the way it works is different.

Anyone on Face Book is a little taken aback the first time someone posts a picture of you without your name but Face Book identifies the face as you. An image of you has been recorded electronically and every time it shows up your are identified.

According to what I have read, the human mind accomplishes something similar but through some mechanism different than the computer. We, for example, often form an image in our mind of what some radio personality looks like even though we have never seen him/her. Something in our past produces an image. If you are like me, the person usually looks far different than I expected.

People paint pictures of God though they have never seen this god nor any other. Something from their culture or experience makes them think they know what God looks like.

The most reproduced image of Jesus has always interested me because, as a farm boy, I spent an evening in a local gymnasium singing and talking while Warner Sallman reproduced in colored chock the most famous painting in the world of Jesus. It is usually called, "Solomon's Head of Christ." The painter, Warner Sallman, was prominent in the denomination I grew up in then called the Swedish Evangelical Covenant Church. I suppose that is why he traveled several hours to be in our town.

Where did Sallman come up with that particular image of what Jesus was supposed to have looked like? It came to him in a vision at 2 AM in January of 1924, he said, in response to his prayer to God during "a desparing situation." This white Jesus does not look much different than members of his Swedish Covenant Church.

That black artists have visions of a black Jesus is not hard to understand. It is not hard to understand, either, why various versions of Jesus and God seem to preach what people in various cultures believe about themselves.

All religion is fed into our brains from our culture.

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