Adult Learning

How We’ll Study:

This study engages with selected passages of Scripture explored in Dr. Lauren Winner's Wearing God, using the book as a guide rather than as the primary focus of our discussion. Each week, we will read the biblical texts for ourselves and examine them from several angles:

1. Biblical – What does the text actually say?

2. Contextual – How would the original audience have understood these images?

3. Theological – What do these metaphors reveal about God's character and work?

4. Devotional – How might these images deepen our prayer and relationship with God?

5. Practical – How can these insights shape our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ?

Our goal is not simply to learn about biblical metaphors for God, but to more deeply know the God to whom they point.

Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God
A Spiritual Exploration of Biblical Metaphors

There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God, Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives.

Exploring the notion of God as clothing, Winner reflects on how we are “clothed with Christ” or how “God fits us like a garment.” She then analyzes how clothing functions culturally to shape our ideals and identify our community, and ruminates on how this new metaphor can function to create new possibilities for our lives. For each biblical metaphor—God as the vine/vintner who animates life; the lactation consultant; and the comedian, showing us our follies, for example—Winner surveys the historical, literary, and cultural landscapes in order to revive and heal our souls.

Winner invites you to expand your spiritual imagination with fresh, startling, and deeply biblical pictures of God:

• Biblical Metaphors for God: Move beyond familiar images like Father and Judge to explore God as clothing, a laboring woman, fire, and even a comedian.

• Expanding Your Spiritual Imagination: Winner blends history, cultural analysis, and personal reflection to show how these forgotten tropes can open new pathways in your own prayer and spiritual life.

• Theology for Everyday Life: Discover how ordinary parts of your world—what you wear, what you eat, how you laugh—can become profound encounters with the divine.

• Gender and Language for God: A thoughtful and accessible look at how the Bible itself uses both masculine and feminine imagery for God, and what that means for our worship today.

above blurb via Amazon Books