See God for Who He Is

How do we move from our distorted image of God?

My early family life made me question whether I had a purpose at all. I wondered why I was alive. I thought about killing myself often, and my mood was flat and depressed.

As a teenager, I was headed south. I wanted to believe in God, but I had been told many times that God was out to get me, and my image of him was distorted by false language that made his nature murky and frightening. One afternoon when I was 13, I was feeling desperate and alone. My parents had separated, and my mother had whisked my sister and me across the country to a new school in the middle of the year.

Without the fragments of my father's love and concern, I was in a deep depression. I was failing science in an unfamiliar school. I was convinced I was fat and ugly. And I had just found out that my parents had given my dog away. I loved that sheltie, and the rage and sorrow that welled up in me after overhearing the news (no one told me directly) took the last teaspoon of pluck out of me. Sitting on the couch in the living room I began to cry. This in itself was not unusual, but this time I couldn't stop. It was as if I was being sucked down into an abyss. I was out of strength and didn't have one bit of tenacity left.

The truth is that so often when we are at our lowest ebb, when we have nothing left, it seems to oil the hinges for the door of God's presence to swing magnificently wide, allowing us to experience the reality of God's presence in a whole new way. For me, in that moment on the couch, the song "Amazing Grace" crackling out over the radio, sung by the old-time voice of George Beverly Shea, oiled those hinges. What I experienced as I only half-listened to the familiar hymn hit me broadside. It pulled me up and caught me by surprise. It stopped my tears, but then started them again for an entirely different reason. I was overcome with the presence of Jesus.

As I sat there, I was flooded with a delighted, almost chuckling love that rippled through my being like a river. Wave after wave of it poured through me; I couldn't stop it. I had the sense that the joy and warmth and aliveness was endless and that I was eternally held in that reality. This was not the God I knew, the one who was distant, disapproving and coercive, the one who chewed people up and spit them out. This was a God who longed to be in relationship with me. I had the sense that I was known, that my name was acknowledged, that this Someone who knew me (did I dare call this One by that awful name—God?), had allowed my life to have meaning. I wasn't a forgotten bit of froth tossed up by a wave and left to evaporate on the sand. In the loving gaze of this Someone, I was an eternal being who was infinitely more important and valuable than I had ever believed.

That night I stayed up all night and read Scripture. The words jumped off the page and walked around with new life. I was transfixed by the fact that as I read the Bible I no longer felt condemned but outrageously and fervently cared for. This was a love that any human love I had experienced up to that point couldn't even begin to approach. Even at 48 years old, when I go back to that moment, it defines who God is for me.

I told this story once in a sermon and was jolted by the responses of the people after the service. I must have heard similar accounts at least ten times over the course of three services that morning. With tears in their eyes, people said things like, "I know what you mean. When I was very young I had an experience of Jesus' love, and I've never forgotten it. Life has been hard, but I keep remembering Jesus' love—the way I experienced him back then." The magnificence of Jesus' presence is unforgettable. It touches everything we long for as humans. You don't forget Jesus' presence. You can't.

When I was young, I lived in Switzerland for a year with my family. If you followed the road we lived on up the hill, you would come to a large field along one side. The villagers who lived in that area told us that, on a clear day, there was a magnificent view of Mount Blanc across this field. Mount Blanc was the highest of the Swiss Alps, but try as we might, we couldn't catch a glimpse of it. Every time we drove up there, the mist hung low and the clouds were heavy, and all we saw was an empty field. After a while we stopped journeying that way, thinking that perhaps the view was overrated, an exaggeration meant to trick naïve Americans into renting houses close by.

But then one day early in the morning, we traveled up that hill again. This time the mists were gone—and there the mountain stood. A great jagged peak was soaring up to the sky, flashing reds and pinks from the rising sun. It was glorious, and we marveled. We made many more travels to that field after that, and most of the time the view was obstructed by mist. But we had seen that alpine giant once and the vision stayed with us. Occasionally it greeted us again with grandeur, but even when we couldn't see it, we knew it was there.

Many people have had an experience of God's presence, and they know he is there. Sometimes they are estranged from him for a long time, but they come back to him—they come back because they remember. They remember when the mist lifted, when they knew Jesus was real, when the reality of his presence was so magnificent that it stuck.

One man shared with me that he'd had a grandmother who rocked him to sleep at night, singing "Jesus Loves Me," when he was three years old. He had become a successful man, competent in every way the world deems important. Yet he remembered his grandmother singing to him in the cauldron of an argumentative, atheistic home with parents who told him God was a crutch. "I felt God's presence," he said. "As she sang, I was aware that there was something more than this life." This experience eventually brought him back to church in his 40's, with his own children in tow.

When God's presence enters our meager four-score-and-ten existence, as we hack it out by the sweat of our brow, it is something we remember for the rest of our days. It resonates with the deepest part of who we are, because it is what we were created for. It chimes out, "The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). It is a vital reference point in our spiritual walk, and it keeps refreshing us and bringing us new life. This gracious intrusion into the way we think, the way we live, the way we create our world pulls us out of our distorted thinking and brings new life to the way we describe God.

I get criticized for being a grace fanatic. I get pinned to the wall at times by those who think I spend too much time talking about the love of God. I can't help it. It's all I know. I was rescued from hell on earth, from atheism, from suicide, by this Eternal Lover, and to not talk about it would be disastrous. To go back to being motivated by fear, by works, by climbing a ladder to try to please God with my filthy-rags righteousness would be a slap in the face to the One who calls me to live from a place of gratitude, forgiveness and adoration of Jesus.

Do you see how the wrong kinds of spiritual language can distort the image of God and make it difficult to get out of the hamster wheel? This is why we have so many joyless Christians walking around. They've forgotten who God is! They've forgotten or have never known "the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free," as the old song puts it. They've been duped by angry preachers, condemning parents or the critically spiritual who point out weaknesses in others for their own self-aggrandizement.

The wrong kinds of spiritual language create horrible idolatries, which we worship without even realizing it. Our image of God, the picture we have of him, is vital for our freedom in Christ. It is vital for our joy in Christ. It is vital for getting out of the hamster wheel. Ask yourself, "Am I worshiping the God of Jesus Christ, or am I worshiping some other god that was created in my own mind by legalism or punishment?"

Until we are transformed by the Holy Spirit our tendency is to create God in our own image based on past experiences, human interactions and our horizontal world. The Israelites made the golden calf by melting their jewelry. They created an idol from the stuff of their lives. They made it from what they had acquired in the world. What did they come up with? A cow! Moo. Couldn't they have come up with something a little more transcendent? If you are going to make an idol, folks, at least do something inspiring.

But we are no better. When we create God from the stuff of our experiences in this world, when we melt together a conglomerate of what we accumulate in this life, we are bound to come up with a pretty sorry representation of God. That is why preachers and teachers and all Christian leaders must use language that adequately expresses who God is in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is called the Word of God. He is the divine expression of love poured out lavishly without limit. He is the very essence of God's heart. He is the eternal transcendent one who is without end in his mercy and compassion and ebullient, self-sustaining, resurrection joy. The words we use can remind us again and again of this truth. "The truth will make you free," Jesus tells his disciples (John 8:32). And what is truth? To know God and his Son, Jesus Christ. The knowledge of God's nature in its wonderful reality can free us from the shackles of idolatry.

A look at the Gospels reveals that Jesus had tremendous distaste for the ways the words of Scripture were used to validate oppression and human suffering. Look at what he does with the interpretation of "Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). He goes out and heals people on the Sabbath, setting them free from illness and disability—to the chagrin of the scribes and Pharisees (John 7). He wasn't supposed to do that! But I can just see Jesus shaking his head in frustration. "This law was made for you! You weren't made to keep this law!" The dos and don'ts of Scripture are meant for freedom, not for hamster-wheel futility.

Jesus' ministry was focused on undoing the misinterpretation of Scripture. The disciples stand by, wide-eyed, and stammer, "But … but … you're not supposed to do that!" The Pharisees are even more surprised—and outraged. "You're not supposed to heal on the Sabbath, or set that prostitute free. The law says she has to be stoned. You aren't supposed to care about Samaritans or touch lepers. The words in the law say they are unclean! You aren't supposed to say that you are God—that's blasphemy!"

God's Word made flesh was a profound revelation that we had managed to use to distort God and keep people in bondage, running around in a hamster wheel, serving a God made up of our own stuff and in our own image.

From Exodus to Revelation God is constantly appearing to set his people free. Look! You're not slaves anymore; here's the Promised Land. Look! You've got Jesus; here I am to die for you so you don't have to sacrifice anymore. Look! Here's the Holy Spirit to empower you to live in freedom. Look! Someday I will set things right, and there will be no more suffering and sighing. Don't succumb to legalism—a system based on fear. Don't let laws be your security; instead let my love keep you safe, secure and liberated.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares, "You have heard that it was said … but I say to you (Matthew 5:21-43). Jesus is declaring his divinity by rewriting the Mosaic law. He is calling people to conform to a pattern of grace and freedom, which was the intent of the law to begin with.

Since so much of Jesus' ministry was focused on reinterpreting the intent of the words of Scripture, redefining our image of God and helping people to see that "God so loved the world," it seems that the church ought to sit up and take notice. How does spiritual language create a distorted image of God?

The ultimate healing power comes from an experience of God's presence. After my own miraculous encounter with the love of Jesus, my struggles were far from over. The difference, however, was that I knew who God was, and I could keep going back to that liberating experience again and again as a reference point. I could begin to believe that I was loved and that maybe, even for me in the dark tunnel of my childhood, there was a future and a hope.

Adapted from Running in Circles: How False Spirituality Traps Us in Unhealthy Relationships,by Kim V. Eggelman, (InterVarsity Press), pages 35-43.

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