In Whose Image?: The Story of One Person's Struggle to Become

By Julia Fullerton

In this book, Julia Fullerton tells of the struggle she has undergone and is still undergoing from a narrow, fundamentalist upbringing to becoming who she is today.

Her struggle, though common to all, is distinctly unique to her. She tells her story simply, with heartrending honesty. It is poignant, raw, and sensitive without becoming maudlin, or overly dramatic.

Julia's first book, Navigating the Impasse told parts of her story in a series of short allegorical cameos. This book tells it more thoroughly, as narrative.

Her love of scripture is evident throughout the book, as is her willingness to travel down the rabbit warrens her thoughts, and ponderings take her as far as she can.

In this book, Julia invites you to follow her on her meanderings, but more than that, she encourages you to find your own pathways to your own discovery of self to your own unique expression of and relationship with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984500731

Julia Fullerton

Julia Fullerton moved several years ago to the wine region of the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia where she lives contentedly with her dog, Stanley. She is a mother and grandmother, sister, friend, colleague, and Gestalt therapist. Julia is an existential thinker who loves a robust discussion with the Bible study group she leads, visits with her children and grandchildren, coffee with friends, opera, and talking well into the night over a glass or two of the locally distilled gin. She enjoys cooking for her local weekly community dinners, expressing herself creatively through painting, pottery, gardening, cooking, and singing, but not through sewing, tidying up, or cleaning. She loves to prepare prayer spaces for people to explore themselves and their relationships with God and his creation. As well as being a Gestalt Therapist, Julia is training to be a spiritual director, and is interested in helping people and their families through the process of dying well. She believes that the struggle to become is common to all humanity and is never truly finished until life's end. Untidy by nature, Julia has found that writing helps her to focus her thoughts and collate them into some kind of useful order, which she hopes will also benefit her readers.

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Copyright © 2018 by Julia Fullerton.

Library of Congress Control Number:              2018909065

ISBN:                  Hardcover                     978-1-9845-0075-5

                            Softcover                       978-1-9845-0074-8

                            eBook                            978-1-9845-0073-1

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Rev. date: 07/31/2018

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Foreword For Julia Fullerton’s Book In Whose Image?

Introduction

Chapter 1     Made in the Image of God

Chapter 2     What Language Does God Speak?

Chapter 3     Where Does God Live?

Chapter 4     Who Is Welcome in God’s Kingdom?

Chapter 5     What Things Are More Important to Me Than to God?

Chapter 6     God Incarnate

Chapter 7     Who Is This God in Whose Image I’m Made?

Chapter 8     Namaste—I Bow to the Divine in You

Chapter 9     Shame versus Unconditional Love

Chapter 10   Religion versus Faith

Chapter 11   What about Hell?

Chapter 12   Has Jesus Already Returned?

Chapter 13   Joining the Trinity

FOREWORD FOR JULIA FULLERTON’S BOOK

IN WHOSE IMAGE?

I can well picture the excitement mixed with fear, anxiety, and trepidation as the young woman, turning her head, notices the light behind her. All her life she has been taught that the old ways are the safe ways, that the shadows dancing on the back wall of the cave are the signs of the kingdom of God. She has been taught to walk a straight path—to think straight, to act straight, and to believe a straight interpretation of the uncontested Word. Above all, she has been taught that to leave the cave is to dwell amongst those who are sinners, that to trust in herself rather than the teachings of the church of her childhood is to damn her soul to eternal darkness.

In this brave, honest, challenging book, we watch as Julia Fullerton discerns that to leave the cave is both the biggest risk of her life and that it is the only way to remain alive. We watch as Julia questions deeply what her life would be like if as a child she had been taught that her emotions are not distant from God, that she is beautiful, that God comes to us out of kindness and love, that all humanity is ‘fluent in God’s eternal language of inclusive, welcoming, generous, abundant, forgiving, and expansive kindness’. This book is unrelenting in its marvellous exploration of this expansiveness of God, of all of humanity, and of one courageous woman who, seized by the potential of a life fully lived, steps beyond the confines of her childhood to embrace love.

Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, writes that ‘God speaks into the darkness the word of creation, and the word that God speaks sets up the endless harmonics of sound in the world. And as we speak, or try to speak truthfully, perhaps what we are doing is far less having to hang labels around the things of the world than to try and find these harmonics, to try to speak in tune with that Word first spoken into silence and darkness. The image of creation that often comes to me is first God makes a great cave and then reaches into it, speaks into it a Word. And from the cave the echoes come back—differently pitched, differently aimed, a world of Word. And we find our place in that—by listening to the harmonics, trying to speak in tune with them.’¹

This is the place Julia finds. She concludes this marvellous exploration by going deep within the cave and finding her personal harmonic. Her sound resonates far beyond the cave, bringing healing to both herself and her community. In tune with the universe, Julia asks, ‘I wonder how different my life might have been if I had been taught that the eternal God of the heavens loves me and delights in me so much that he wants to invite me into his inner communion of self. In reading of this relationship and in chewing it over and processing it, it seems to me to be amazing and wonderful! It is all the things my soul desires. It is honouring, joyful, eternally loving, expansive, free, expressive, generous, and spacious. There is room for everyone, and I want to be part of it.’

Julia, may your truth, found through struggle, continue to resonate across the cosmos.

Cath Connelly, M.A. (Spirituality), Co-director Living Well Centre, Melbourne.

May 2018

INTRODUCTION

I absolutely believe that each human being that has ever been made (including those who never made it to life outside the womb) is unique. I believe that there is only one being like you, and has only ever been, throughout the whole of human history.

It is out of—and through—this belief that I ask my recurring refrain: ‘Who might I have been/What might I have been like/What might my life have been like, if I had known this particular truth earlier?’ My question is more about fullness and abundance than about make-up. I am not asking what my make-up might have been but, rather, how much fuller might I have been, how much more robust, freer, bolder in my expression of me, and how much clearer could my unique expression of God have been?

I know that all the difficult and strange things that have made up my life have not stopped me from being me. I am always me. I believe some of these things hindered, faltered, and stifled the expression, though. They retarded its growth and tried to kill it. I believe that my persistence and my determination to know God in these places (even though She sometimes seemed absent) helped my expression of Her in me.

I do not believe that the good and wonderful things in my life made me more me than I would otherwise have been. I believe that they have shed a clearer light on this God, in whose image I was made, and have made it easier for me to see who ‘me’ really is and to express this me.

I believe that the expression of me (and therefore the expression of God in me) has become clearer as I have grappled with, sifted and trudged through some of the questions in this book. My refrain reflects both the sadness that I didn’t get to where I am earlier and my joy that I am here now, even though I know there is still a way to go.

Alongside these things is my hope that this book may encourage others to find the things that are stopping the full expression of them and to work through those things with courage and joy, looking always for a clearer and clearer unique expression of God in their own selves.

You will find that there is a lot of scripture to read. It has been suggested to me that I cut some out, but I have found myself unable to. Scripture quotes are all in italics, so, if reading great chunks of scripture isn’t your thing, it should be relatively easy for you to do your own editing while reading.

CHAPTER 1

Made in the Image of God

There is something in the soul that is so akin to God that it is one with Him… . It has nothing in common with anything created.

Meister Eckhart

God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

I wonder how different my life would have been if my parents, teachers, neighbours, and other adults of my childhood had believed that I was actually made as an expression of God, not as a replica, or the total expression, but as an expression—a unique-in-the-whole-of-eternity expression of the living God. What if they had honestly believed that I had a make-up, a gifting, a purpose, unique in the whole history of humanity, to express God in this particular ‘Julia way’? To be Julia with a full abundance and, in that fullness, to know God in me and through me, and me in God in every moment of my life? What would I have grown up like? Who would I be now?

Words have such power. I read a book by H. Norman Wright called The Power of a Parent’s Words, where I understood for the first time, cognitively, the value of both good, building-up words and evil, tearing-down ones. It was such a powerful book for me. I had endeavoured (and failed many times) to speak only good into the lives of my children, and reading this book made me realise why this had been so important to me. Words were spoken to and about me in my formative years that damaged me greatly.

I didn’t want to do that to my children.

Over my childhood years (as did many children of my generation), I had lived with a backdrop of shame, blame, and punishment. This had resulted in me living with a general feeling of fear and a constant need to hide myself. One of the far-reaching consequences of that was that I forgot who I was. Along with that went a sense that children (especially girls) didn’t matter much, so by the time I was an adult, I had little idea of how to be me. I knew a lot of the rules for life, but I was filled with shame and fear, shrunken inside myself somehow, whilst looking fully engaged with life. I had got the lie down pat. No one knew how damaged I was, not even me, until I read that book and a light was shone into my soul.

Words, as I said, are important:

God said, ‘Let there be light.’ (Genesis 1:3)

God said. By speaking, God brings the world into existence.

(New English Translation © 1996–2005 Biblical Studies Press, netbible.org, Bible notes)

What, I wondered, if the words of the Ten Commandments that God wrote on the stone were meant to ‘work’ in the same way as the ‘and God said …’ words? What if we were supposed to follow them, not—as I was taught them—as ‘commands to be obeyed or else God will withhold Himself from you’, but that they were just meant to be spoken into being? What if, instead of being markers to show (by our obedience) how much we love God, they were spoken for our health as free humans, freed from the slavery of ‘sin’ and ‘the slave owner’ of this world? What if they were markers, not of laws to be obeyed, but rather of how much God loves us and wants the best for us—body, soul, and spirit?

We human beings were not only created by word, like the rest of creation, to be spoken or sung into being. We were handmade with care and creative thoughtfulness. We were made uniquely to be in a different kind of relationship with him. But what if we had forgotten how to listen to God? What if these words were meant to remind us how to live well and freely with each other and with God in this world? What if, not understanding this, we took those words and rebelled against (or obeyed) them as commandments in the same way as we individually respond as children to our parents’, teachers’, neighbours’, and other adults’ words about us? With rebellion or with obedience, but not in growth and development in the ground of relationship and love?

After reading that book, I began to wonder differently about God’s Word. He only has to speak and it becomes, and yet he didn’t just speak human beings into existence. I started to wonder why he had made us differently from the rest of creation. The NET Bible notes suggest that God may have even invited his heavenly court (his angels) to participate in this new creation of the making of humans.

In 2 Sam 24:14 David uses the plural as representative of all Israel, and in Isa 6:8 the Lord speaks on behalf of his heavenly court. In its ancient Israelite context the plural is most naturally understood as referring to God and his heavenly court (see 1 Kgs 22:19–22; Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6; Isa 6:1–8). (The most well-known members of this court are God’s messengers, or angels.) (NET Bible notes)

It appears that in the making of humans, there is something different. We don’t have to obey God’s Word. We don’t fall under the same jurisdiction as the rest of creation. We have choice. We have morality to weigh up. We have conscience, relationship, love, family, other people’s feelings, and bodies. We have been made like God—in God’s image.

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’ God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

How is nature in relationship with God, and how is it different for us human beings? This is a question I pondered often as a child, and it stemmed from the simple and complex question that I pondered one particular childhood day: How do buttercups glorify God? This may read like a strange question, but it was important to me as a little girl.

I grew up in a closed (more or less exclusive) Brethren church, which had extremely strict rules. One of them was that women should have long hair. This came from an interpretation of verses found in 1 Corinthians, where it talks about women’s long hair being a covering for them and a glory. It was further complicated by references to authority, subjection, and angels.

So I grew up with ‘godly women’ having long hair and wearing head coverings in church and being apparently ‘under subjection’ (not wearing trousers or make-up or having pierced ears, etc., and not speaking or praying aloud in church.) Both my sisters had beautiful long, thick hair, but mine was fine and was always cut short. One day (at around the age of six) I was apparently making a bit of a fuss about wanting to grow my hair long, and my mum said something like, ‘Long hair is meant to be a glory to you, but your hair is no glory to you, Julia.’

I felt as if I had been slapped. I was so ashamed of my inability to glorify God and went out and sat in a field, crying and feeling far away from God. I had been taught that to be near to God, you had to obey all the rules. I was wondering how I could ever be a glory to God (goodness only knows what I thought that meant, at that age!), when some buttercups took my attention. I looked at them for a long while, thinking about them and about me not being able to glorify God, until I started to think of all creation praising God and somehow connected ‘glorifying’ with ‘praising’, and I realised that all the buttercup needed to do to praise, or glorify, God was to be yellow and shiny, to have dark-green leaves, and to suck up the water. In other words, all the buttercup had to do was to be itself—to be recognisable as a buttercup. Surely that wasn’t too difficult for a buttercup?

Maybe, all I needed to do to glorify God—even if my hair was fine and kept short—was to be me: fully, unreservedly, and recognisably.

Of course, that was difficult in my family and church life, because I was constantly being punished for being me. It was obvious to me (and more so as I grew up and tried to express me in as many different ways as I could) that being me would never be approved of by my family, my church, the world generally, and especially and above all, by God. I spent far too many years trying for their acceptance and approval. I tried, as my sister seemed able to do, to fit into other people’s boxes. That was never going to work for me, so I tried to be funny and relieve tensions, to tell stories and ‘embroider the truth’. I learnt to look like I was caring even when I wasn’t; to hum a happy tune when I was sad or frightened; to know what made other people happy and how to relieve their tension and to give to them—or do for them—whatever kept me in some sort of relationship with them, even at personal cost.

In all this, I kept shelving (and eventually forgot) this six-year-old assurance that if I was just me, I would naturally glorify God, and that this was all that God hoped of me—to be me, fully. Now, as I look at these words, I am sad.

All God ever hoped from me was that I should be me.

He created me to be just me and, in that being, to express a completely unique aspect of his own glorious divinity. And here I am, the other side of sixty years of age, still trying to find out who I am, still trying to decipher and navigate the landscape of Me, still trying to learn who I am and how God is expressed in me.

It is extraordinarily difficult to know who you are in this world. Different people tell you different things about yourself all the time when you are young and your body, brain, and personality are forming. A baby, coming into the world, relies on those around him or her (we shall assume she’s a girl from now on) to tell her who she is. Her doctor says, ‘You have a beautiful, healthy baby girl,’ and the mother says to the father, ‘She’s not nearly as beautiful as our last baby.