How do you imagine God? What is he like? A great Architect? A loving Father? A mathematician? The Great Cosmic Destroyer? Go on, picture him for a moment. How do you like to think of God?
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Today I was challenged about the mental picture I hold of God. Consider the second commandment God gave to Moses.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Exodus 20:4 (ESV)
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Undeniably this is talking about visual images and statues, but it makes sense if you apply it to mental images as well. To create a mental image of how I like to think of God actually obscures who God is. To create a mental picture of how I’d like God to be encourages me to think falsely about him. If I think of God as just a loving Father, I obscure his justice. If I think of him as a Brilliant Architect, I obscure his mercy.
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God is much bigger than any picture I can imagine of him. I cannot use my powers of deduction or imagination to work out what he is like.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
Isaiah 55:8 (ESV)
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God is so other to us that we cannot imagine what he is like. His wisdom is so far beyond ours that we cannot puzzle out anything about him. We can only know what God has chosen to tell us about himself.
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And God has spoken.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
Hebrews 1:1-2 (ESV)
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He has spoken in various ways and told us about himself. Sometimes he spoke directly, like at Mount Sinai (see Exodus 19 and following), other times he spoke through a person. But God has revealed himself. If you want to know him then don’t use your imagination, use your brain and read the scriptures for they show us God as he truly is.
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If you want to know what God is like, then listen to what God tells us about himself.
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photo credit: kevindooley
I love those moments when your nice little neat concept of God is blown out of the water – He can’t be put in a box – although we can know definite things about Him, we’re unable to completely contain Him in our thinking… Often I fall into the trap of going “ok, so this is what God is like” and trying to tidy up my thinking too much, only to be rebuked by the Bible for leaving out other facets of God’s personality. Praise God for Jesus, “the image of the invisible God”!