What is an image of God?

It’s not a figure made out of metal.  It has been, and I imagine still is for many people in other parts of the world, but when we speak of the image of God we don’t mean something metal. For us, it’s something mental, the creation of our capacity to think, to picture things we can’t see.

I have, for instance, an image of the equator.  I crossed it when I was little. If I should be anywhere near it again, I wouldn’t see anything, but I still have a vivid image of it. It’s a black band around the middle of the globe.

We all have an image of God. For some, it’s nothing more than a blank. For some, it’s a picture of an overgrown man who manages the affairs of the universe.

For others, it’s an abstract principle. The law of gravity isn’t anything you can see; neither is the law of love.  Both are abstract principles; you can’t see either, but you see what they do.

When a person falls off the roof, you see what the law of gravity does; when a person gives one’s life for a friend, you see what the law of love can do.

For some people the picture of God is as clear as day, but for others it’s murky. But everyone has some picture. From that, let us proceed to the fact that your picture of God isn’t always the same, not even during your own lifetime.

When you were a child, God may have been near to you when you knelt by your bed and prayed, God bless mummy and daddy, and make me a good boy or good girl as the case may be.

Then when you became a young man or woman, and faced the complexities of life and saw before you the riddles of existence God disappeared completely, like the sun behind the clouds.

And then, when you grew a little older, God may have come back, but not exactly in the same way, but a greater, vaster God.

Also, down through the years the image of God has been constantly changing. In the primitive days of humankind it was the image of a spirit which dwelt in a river, or tree, or mountain. You can easily see how this happened.

What you can’t see so easily is that one small nation came to the point where they saw that the real image of God was the spirit of justice, and they found God, as Lincoln later described as the “great Disposer of Events”, the God of history.

Isn’t it amazing that those Jews so despised, had that tremendous insight that no one else had that God was the spirit of justice, of right and wrong, and the Disposer of Events.

Don’t be surprised if your image of God changes. It changes because you change. You know more about the world than you once did. The man or woman, for instance, who saw the world as a platter around which all the suns and stars and planets revolved, had a picture of God quite different from the picture of a person who sees the world in terms of interstellar spaces, light years and outer space.

We can assume, however, that more people than we think have the old image of God.  They picture God as a person ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ and therefore apart from the universe and the life we live. They speak in anthropomorphic terms and refer to God as ‘he’ and ‘him’. And by and large, ‘he’ is apart from them, ‘up there’, or ‘out there’.

We make this judgment on the way people act more than on what they say. There are two things that might lead us to that judgment as we observe their behavior. 

The first is the fact that most of the time they don’t pay any attention to God. They act as though God were completely apart from the life they live. They make their decisions and go about their business with no reference to God whatever. One day a week, perhaps, they go through the formality of recognizing God’s presence.

The second is the fact, that when they pray, they pray to that which isn’t always with them, but to something that’s ‘out there’, and they plead with ‘him’ to come and help them in time of an emergency, the way you call an ambulance, or the fire department, or a doctor.

Let me put it imperfectly in this simple figure. Suppose that you were attending the rehearsal of a play, and it came to your mind that you would like to meet the playwright. You ask someone “where is the person who wrote the play”?

No one seems to know.  So you begin to look. First you go on the stage and look up into the dazzling lights, and on the platforms that swing to and fro. You think that she might be up there looking down upon the players, but there’s no sign of her there.  Then you look in the wings; you think she might be there. Then you look in the prompter’s box, but she isn’t there. Then you think that she may be out in the dark theatre, sitting there watching the play where no one can see her. So you go through the endless rows of empty seats. Surely, in the last row you’ll find her. But there isn’t anyone there, every seat is empty; and you come to the conclusion that the writer isn’t there at all.

But you’re looking for the playwright in the wrong place. If you want to meet her – look for her on the stage, in the play. You may not meet her face to face; but the deeper you go into the play, the more you’ll come to terms with the mind and purpose of the writer who created it.

By the same token, if you want to meet God, don’t go higher and higher into space.  If you do you’ll run the risk of having the same experience as Rupert Brook, who wrote:

Because God put adamantine fate

between my sullen heart and its desire,

I swore, that I would burst the iron gate

rise up and curse God on the throne of fire.

Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,

but love was as a flame about my feet,

proud up the golden stair I strode;

and beat thrice on the gate, and entered with a cry.

All the great courts were quiet in the sun,

and full of vacant echoes; moss had grown

over the glassy pavement, and begun

to creep within the dusty council halls.

An idle wind blew round an empty throne

and stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.

More people than we think have been through that experience. They’ve gone in the same direction looking for the God that Rupert Brooke was looking for, and when they got where they thought God should be there wasn’t anything there.

If you want to find God, go deeper into your own life, into the relationships you have with other people into the mysteries of life and death and as you go into those depths you’ll meet the God that is greater than anything you can think or do or be.

Let’s go back now for a moment and ask the question: Do we need, do you need, a new image of God. If you’re living on the image you had when you were a child, you’ll have no religious life that means anything at all.

Many of you, I know, have long ago given away your childhood image of God. You no longer have an image of God as a glorified man. Your image is of a living presence, of mind, purpose, power, love that sustains you.

You find it in the Bible, if you look in the right places, the one hundred and thirty ninth Psalm, for example, or the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.

But some people haven’t, I know that, too. They’re still looking for God in the wings, and if you’re in that position you need a new image of God.

There’s one thing to remember. In the New Testament there is a new image of God.

As far as I can find out, the only reference to the “ image of God in the New Testament is the one made to Jesus who is referred to “as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of God’s very being.” Begin with him. Begin with the concrete, and then move into the abstract. For most people that is the way, I’m sure.

I’ll give you one illustration from my own life.

As a boy, I loved music, but I never had a chance to hear great music. We didn’t have a record player, or the stacks of classical records or c.d.’s people have today.

But one time, an older man took me to hear a famous violinist, who was playing in Central United Church, in Brandon, Manitoba. I don’t know who the violinist was, or whether he even played well or not, but it’s still for me the image of great music.  It was concrete.

I know that there’s a great deal more than that about music, and I hope that I’ve learned something since, but I began with that vivid image that was concrete and I shall never forget it as long as I live.

Begin with Jesus – the way he lived, the way he managed his life, the way he loved, his willingness to die for what he believed, the way he lost his life, the way he still lives now. If you begin with him you may find that Jesus is the window through which you may get a glimpse of the reality of God.

Dr. John Sullivan

Former officer

Canada
____________________