BY: GILBERT PILAYRE
Cogitations
Sometimes, while walking through open spaces, wandering in the thicket of trees, or simply watching a film, reading a book, or encountering a tragic news story, I find myself wondering: where does God come into all of this? Born and raised a Christian Catholic, I was often made to feel that questioning the existence of a divine being was forbidden. Yet how can we arrive at certainty if we are always apprehensive about facing such a challenge?
Knowing the colonial history that shaped my heritage, the concept of punishment—whether corporeal or psychological—often prevents me from seeking answers. In my mind, voices shout: “Don’t rock the boat!”; “Faithless heretic!”; “Do not disrespect traditions!”; “Don’t disturb the peace!”; “Go to hell!” and so on. Some of us remain like infants, lulled into a non-thinking ocean of spontaneity and disengagement when our immediate needs are met.
Nevertheless, these thoughts, unsettling as they are, also make us fully alive. We become engaged. We adopt advocacies for justice, mercy, and love, trying to imprint meaning upon existence—even as some of our so-called personal heroes disappoint us, turning 180 degrees from the values we once admired in them.
There is a German word for this complexity: “Mensch!”—literally, “humans!” It carries a range of tones, from mild frustration to outright annoyance. From these tensions, I try to glean some nuggets of thought to reflect upon. After all, if Jacob wrestled with God, why can’t we?
The idea that our concept of God may be nothing more than a projection of ourselves has been explored by various philosophers and thinkers throughout history. This notion suggests that instead of discovering a transcendent being, humans may be constructing God in their own image, projecting their desires, fears, and ideals onto an external figure.
Ludwig Feuerbach, a 19th-century German philosopher, is perhaps most famous for this idea. In his work *The Essence of Christianity* (1841), he argued that God is a projection of human nature. All the qualities we wish we had—omniscience, omnipotence, perfect morality—are attributed to God. In this view, the concept of God arises from humanity’s desire to externalize its own potential and ideals. Feuerbach once said: “God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a man’s inward nature.”
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, extended this notion into psychological theory. He viewed religious belief as wish-fulfillment, seeing the concept of God as stemming from the infantile need for a protective father figure. According to him: “Religious ideas are born of the same need as all the other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature.”
Friedrich Nietzsche took a more radical stance, declaring that “God is dead!” and critiquing the very idea of religion and morality. He suggested that the concept of God was an illusion created to suppress
human will and individuality. He provocatively asked: “Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
Immanuel Kant did not entirely reject the idea of God but argued that our knowledge of God is limited by human perception. He proposed that we can never know God’s essence (the noumenon) but only as we conceive it within the limits of human cognition. He wrote: “We cannot know what God is in Himself, but only as He appears to us through the framework of our human understanding.”
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, offered a different take. While he also saw the idea of God as a projection, he viewed it positively.
For Jung, religious symbols and concepts, including God, were archetypes-universal images from the collective unconscious that help individuals find meaning and guidance. He noted: “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” This projection theory does not necessarily negate the existence of God but challenges how we understand His nature. If our concept of God is influenced by human traits and desires, it suggests that much of what we attribute to the divine might reflect our own psychology, values, and cultural needs.
Such perspectives push us to examine our religious beliefs critically and consider how much of what we call “God” is shaped by our biases, longings, and limitations. They also raise deeper questions about the nature of faith, the role of religion in society, and the ultimate source of human meaning and morality.
As the world seems to plunge deeper into the rabbit hole – evident in how we choose our leaders and navigate our challenges-we are left wondering whether our collective projection of God is also evolving.
These perspectives encourage self-reflection: “How do our personal experiences, upbringing, and cultural contexts influence our image of God?” To conclude this essay, let me echo the profound words of St. lrenaeus of Lyons: “The glory of God is a man fully alive.”
Below is an Al representation of Jacob wrestling with God.
