Making God In Our Own Image

Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s)

On a few occasions lately, I have come across a story, or a verse from the Bible that doesn’t seem to match what I know of who God is. From my understanding of him from the whole of the Bible, and from living life with him every day, interacting with him, getting to know him… it doesn’t seem to fit. And yet it’s right there in print… in the most well-documented book ever. So I am then faced with a decision. Do I believe what “I know” about God, or what I am seeing from him right now? That’s not an easy question to answer.

I actually believe it might be a bit of both things. Certainly I can not know everything about God, just as I can’t know everything about any other person… even moreso can I not know the fullness of who God is. However, I can also trust what I do know of him as a way to interpret/understand what I am reading that seems to “contradict” that. From there, I figure I need his help to understand the stuff I don’t understand.

Some examples. Recently I was having an IM conversation with a friend and talking about how I don’t see Jesus living out life as though there are two worlds: the Sacred vs the Secular. It seems to me from all the events I see in Jesus’ life that those two worlds that I think we created were quite intermingled in Jesus’ world. He would hang with the “sinner” as well as the ultra-religiously-pious. My friend however pointed out that Jesus would often remind his disciples to not be “like the world”, or, “like the gentiles”. Seems as though Jesus was making a separation, or a distinction there, no? Still, I can not resolve that with the way Jesus treated everyone. Though there may have been a verbal distinction, all were treated equally by Jesus.

Another comes from reading some of the stories Jesus told in the last week before he was killed. My boys and I are reading through the book of Matthew, and there’s some crazy stuff in the 25th chapter. Mostly stories about “the end times” where there appear to be people who do right, and then opposing people who “do wrong” (or, don’t do right). So… it sure sounds like in story after story that either you “do good” in life, or you’ll be “thrown into the dark where people will cry and grit their teeth in pain.” Does that sound like how Jesus lived? Will he just be different when it’s the “end of the world”?

See, what I end up saying most of the time to the boys is, “I really don’t know.” They usually laugh a little, but I hope they learn from that. I don’t want them to think we have all the answers, and that once they learn them and can pass the Jesus test, that they then know God… end of story. Life is certainly not about knowing the answers. But I do want to know him, and sometimes the things I think I know of him do not match some new stuff (or sometimes, old stuff) I am learning about him. That’s when I stop to consider the fact that some of what I know of him might just be stuff I made up about him.

Confusing, I know.

Perhaps this is too much analysis… but it is what I have been thinking. And all of this makes me want to read my Bible more, and learn from everything I see of Jesus, and even his followers, contained in those pages. I want Jesus to unfold the reality of himself – who he really is – in every part of my life. I love that we don’t have a “church life” as we used to know it, and that Jesus is truly part of our entire lives these days. I only want know him more and more… really know him… not continue to create my own ideas of who he is.

That’s the amazing part about living life with Jesus, and his Spirit in us… it’s dynamic. He’s the same, but our understanding of him can change as we learn what is him, and what we have made up. Fascinating. A little scary, but exhilirating.

How incredible that he wants that relationship with us! We are friends of God! (That’s from Romans 5…) As puzzling as he may be sometimes, I know that I can count on that being true… and so we press on to know the God we could never create.

What a trip!