How Does Jesus Picture God?
"I can't believe in God anymore." His face grimaced.
"It's not easy to share such deep things,” I offered. We paused for a while. Then I asked, “Would you feel ok if I asked a question to understand more about your experience?"
He nodded.
"Would you feel comfortable telling me more about the God you are rejecting?"
"Hell," he said. His answer was immediate. "I can't believe in a God who gleefully tortures people and sadistically refuses to end the suffering of it."
I paused. We both did for a long while.
I said. "I think each of us has an inkling somehow that we were created to love and not to harm another human being. I don't know how this sounds to you, but if I’m hearing you rightly, God is like a serial killer or a sadistic torturer. I can see why you'd disavow such a god. I’d reject that picture of God too."
He looked at me with surprise. "I thought you were a Christian?"
"I am," I said. “That’s why I’d join you in rejecting this god.”
Doubt, Faith and our Mental Pictures of God
Ask a philosopher or theologian, "Who is God?" and he or she will use words like incorporeality, omnipotence, omniscience, or omnipresence.
Ask Jesus, "Who is God?" and he will likely answer, "God is like" and then point you to something in the created world. Or he’ll tell you a story with clues about God made for finding in one of the story’s characters.
So, when a friend tells us that they believe or doubt God, we can learn more about them, (and ourselves), by asking for the mental picture behind the words. We can ask:
Would you describe more about the God that you doubt?
What is the god you reject, like?[1]
In his short stories, Jesus acknowledges the images of God that cause us doubt.
God is like a harsh, unfair boss (Matthew 25:24-25)
God is like a good expert who is either negligent or powerless to stop bad things from happening (Matt. 13:27)
God is like a parent who bores you, stifles your good times, and causes you to dream of leaving home and getting as far away as you can. (Luke 15:12)
Often, Jesus more positively pictures an answer to our question, "Who is God?"
God is like a shepherd
God is like a woman
God is like a father (Luke 15)
Do any of Jesus’ images of God above, surprise or bother you? Are you able to articulate why?
A Place to Begin
Linking back to the man who rejected the masochistic serial killer image of God, I said something like this.
"I think the picture of God you describe sounds more like how a poet named Dante imagined God in fiction than the pictures of God Jesus paints for us in reality. I don't mean to imply that you'll like or believe what Jesus has to say. His images of Hell for example still disturb us with their images of “outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.” But his images for God do not match the images you’ve described. As a way of finding answers to our questions, would you have any interest in exploring the pictures of God that Jesus gives us?”
How does my question to this man, sound to you? Whether cynical or curious, here are a few more of Jesus’ mental pictures of God, including those in which Jesus mysteriously includes himself as having the qualities and abilities of God.
a vine a door bread light a woman baking
a seed that grows into a thriving tree of shade and fruit
a mother gathering her chicks a homeless man a property owner
a good king a skilled doctor water
a Feeder of birds, caretaker of flowers
a businessman settling accounts
a fisherman gathering fish in nets and sorting them
a bridegroom inviting you to a wedding feast
an owner of a vineyard who gives good work, more than fair pay, noble purpose and bears with the complaints of those who don’t like him
a good and fair judge
a landowner whose workers revolted and killed his messengers including his son
a field with hidden-treasure that will give you more joy than anything you possess
For Personal Reflection or Conversation with a Friend
· Which of Jesus’ images of God would you hope are true?
· Any of them you think too good to be true?
· Which of them you wouldn’t want to be true?
Imagine as a parent or grandparent. To teach your kids about God, you can take a course on philosophy, but you could more readily tell Jesus’ stories and start to share the various pictures of what Jesus says God is like.
Someone Raises Their Hand and Says
“Hold on,” someone asks. “What about the man’s question about hell?”
Right. I’ll come back to that. For now, do you think your mental images of God, differ or resemble the man whose story I mentioned at the beginning?
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/
