Defending the God Beyond: The Development of the A God-Scale—a New Instrument for the Assessment of People's Perceptions, Experiences, and Activities in Relationship to God—and Its Initial Use in a Forgiveness Study

Abstract

God is regularly misconstrued in society. Many argue that a primary cause of this distortion stems from people's relationships and particularly their poor relationships with their parents. Given the prevalence of strained child-parent relationships, there is a need to examine if and to what degree parents and people's perceptions of their parents influence their understanding of God. This article describes the preliminary steps involved in creating the A God-scale (AGS), a psychometric instrument that measures people's cognitive perceptions, affective experiences, and activities in relationship to God. It also points to the scale's initial use in a study that evaluated whether forgiving one's parents can affect one's relationship with God. The study's findings reveal that the AGS shows strong, initial signs of internal consistency and that it can be easily administered in a variety of pastoral and clinical settings. The findings also depict that the process of forgiving one's parents can liberate the forgivers' views of God and in this sense the God beyond as well.