What does God feel like?
Photograph by Jaka Škrlep via Unsplash
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
We see a lot of comparisons to God as a shepherd in the Bible, and that makes a lot of sense, because when you’re dealing with something as big (and sometimes abstract) as God, you have to search for words that come from your background to be able to understand that. You need simile and metaphor, and all the tools of comparison to try to draw closer to what this mysterious being is.
Even after so many years, God is still a placeholder word. The German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto used the words “numinous,” “the holy,” and “the wholly other” to talk about God. I think those things get a little bit closer to what we mean, but in English, when we want to talk about this entity that we can’t really know terribly much about, we use the term God.
And for the folks in the Bible, that God looked like a shepherd. Shepherds don’t drive sheep like cattle, they walk ahead of them, and studies have shown that the Bible got it right. Sheep recognize the sound of the shepherd’s voice, and because they do, they follow the shepherd.
Now, in first-century Palestine, I’m sure everyone knew that, and that’s why it was such a powerful metaphor, but 2000 years in the future, most of us have little engagement with animal husbandry, so we don’t know these things as innately. Even so, the Bible tells us that Jesus’ listeners were like us sometimes when engaging with Scripture: “Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them” (John 10:6).
The images of Scripture sometimes resonate and sometimes frustrate, but they are there because we have little else to offer in the spiritual pursuit besides image. We must imagine what this being that is out there and created the universe feels like, and feeling is really the key here. It’s not about whether God is literally a shepherd, but it is about the feeling of being watched over, the sense that if we could just hear God’s voice clearly, we would follow. These are feeling images.
The image of God as our shepherd in the Bible isn’t about whether God is literally a shepherd, but it is about the feeling of being watched over, the sense that if we could just hear God’s voice clearly, we would follow.
We have so many images at our disposal, but when Jesus is using these images in John 10:10, he clearly articulates what he wants to convey – he comes as the shepherd to give “life abundantly.” That’s what life with God is supposed to feel like – abundant.
So much of religion these days doesn’t feel like life abundant, but that’s what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to help us ask the tough questions, to wrestle with what it means to be human beings in this modern world; it’s supposed to prepare us for awe at the mystery of it all. Yes, it’s supposed to get us ready to die, and it’s supposed to make us want to live. It’s supposed to give us the power to change everything, and it’s supposed to make us appreciate tradition. It is there to make us wise, and it will humble us if we let it. It’s there to make us open our eyes, and to close them in silence, to feel the soft slow hum of the universe, to acknowledge how much love fills it.
And if it’s not doing that – if it doesn’t make us feel protected or safe like with a shepherd, or feel challenged, or afraid, or excited, or anything that it’s supposed to be doing – it’s not the genuine article. That’s why there’s so many shepherds, little breadcrumbs left behind by people who were on the same path that we are on and who found courage, love, and hope along the way. They used these images to show us what being with God feels like.
And now, it’s all up to us. How will we use it? What new images do we need? It’s all right there for the taking. The key is to keep using this tradition to articulate what capital-L Love feels like, and that might mean that we need new images. That’s the sign of a living tradition, one that can adapt and change to meet the needs of the moment.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His most recent book, co-authored with Anna Piela, Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice (Judson Press 2026) offers a theology of interfaith engagement with Muslims. Woolf is also a co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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