Seeing God as Cruel or Distant: Links with Divine Struggles Involving Anger, Doubt, and Fear of God's Disapproval

Abstract

Many people experience what psychologists refer to as divine struggle: struggle focused on ideas about God or a perceived relationship with God. When trying to predict this type of spiritual struggle, it may be useful to consider a person's basic concept of God. We examined two facets of a negative God concept—seeing God as cruel or distant—as potential predictors of divine struggle. We expected that views of God as cruel and distant would correlate highly; however, we also proposed that each view would be especially useful in predicting certain forms of divine struggle. Specifically, we reasoned that seeing God as cruel would be especially useful in predicting anger at God and concern about God's anger or disapproval toward the self. In contrast, we proposed that seeing God as distant would be especially predictive of doubt about God's existence. These hypotheses received solid support in web-based studies with two samples (413 undergraduates and a broader sample of 471 U.S. adults).

Notes

¹ Some nonbelievers can generate hypothetical images of God (Exline et al., 2011). However, these images focus on a being who is not believed to exist. This difference in the perceived reality of God images creates conceptual challenges when trying to compare God images of nonbelievers and believers. Also, our studies included few nonbelievers who held images of God (the maximum was 50, in Study 2). The small number of nonbelievers limited statistical power for analyses of the subsample, and it increased the risk of misrepresenting the group. Describing the analyses with sufficient nuance and detail would also add length and complexity to the article. Based on these considerations, we decided to omit the nonbeliever data.

² Note the difference here from Sample 1, which left agnostics in the sample. Sample 2, then, is more of a “true believer” sample than Sample 1.

³ Additional confirmatory factor analyses revealed that two-factor models (loving vs. distant/cruel) showed poor fits: Sample 1, χ²(34, n = 413) = 517.82, p < .001, χ²/df = 15.23, NFI = .942, CFI = .946, RMSEA = .186, PCLOSE = .000; Sample 2, χ²(34, n = 471) = 193.13, p < .001, χ²/df = 5.68, NFI = .949, CFI = .947, RMSEA = .100, PCLOSE = .000. Single-factor solutions showed extremely poor fits: Sample 1, χ²(35, n = 413) = 1602.29, p < .001, χ²/df = 45.78, NFI = .821, CFI = .824, RMSEA = .330, PCLOSE = .000; Sample 2: χ²(35, n = 471) = 1157.68, p < .001, χ²/df = 33.08, NFI = .695, CFI = .700, RMSEA = .261, PCLOSE = .000.

⁴ The small but significant beta weight for God as distant in predicting current anger toward God may have been partly due to the fact that agnostics were excluded from Sample 2. When the Sample 1 regression was run with agnostics excluded, results paralleled those from Sample 2, with significant betas for both Distant (β = .17, p < .01) and Cruel (β = .47, p < .01).