What Does God Look Like?

5/23/2014

Dear Church Family,

What does God look like? Do you have any idea? Some feel He looks like an old man with a long gray beard, sitting on a throne. In that thought provoking book, "The Shack" by William P. Young, God is portrayed as an African American Woman who meets the main character in a cabin. So who is right? What does God look like?

In our text for Sunday, John 14:1-14, Philip asks Jesus that question. He says, "Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." In other words, "What does God really look like?" To find out how Jesus responds, you'll have to read your Bible. That's a good idea anyway because it will lay the groundwork for our worship Sunday.

Be in prayer for our Mission Team as they are going to Mississippi this week. During Sunday's worship, we will commission them, and send them forth with God's blessing.

I look forward to seeing you Sunday. And if anyone has any thoughts about what God looks like, I would love to hear it.

May God bless you and keep you,

Josh

1 Comment

Corey Green

5/23/2014 03:01:44 am

But there's a BIG difference between an old white man with a beard and an African-American woman in a cabin. One of the bigger questions, I think, is what we say about ourselves and what we want to look up to or distance ourselves from when we choose to see God as one thing or another. What does it mean that we want the source of ultimate truth and authority to be a White old man, imbued with all the privilege that White men get. Are we reaffirming a particular social order in this embodiment of God? Granted, he's like a wise, old grandfather, but he also seems distant and unattainable. He seems to be someone we can never be.

By the same token, what would it mean to see God as an African-American woman we meet in a cabin? Is this an older woman? I would presume so, since we associate wisdom with age. What do we associate with African-Americans and with specifically African-American women? I remember the Oracle from The Matrix. She was a supernatural figure who was an African-American middle-aged woman. It seems to me that many of her traits would apply to this view of God. The Oracle is a common tenement dweller who also seems to be a babysitter. According to one stereotype, African-Americans represent an unassuming closeness to some time before this supposedly complicated present. As a woman, she would represent maternalness, but she might also carry on the mammy figure, someone who is not our mother, but might stand in for her.

Another big question for me is why we desire to see God in a body. If God created the universe, do we believe he also is in a bodily form we can grasp? Is he as small as you or me? Is that the implication of being "created in His image?" It is equally strange to me to imagine Him as some type of otherworldly giant. I don't quite know how to imagine him in a bodily form, but I do think it says something about us that we must imagine him in a body in the first place. At the very least, it implies we have difficulty relating to beings that do not appear similar to us.

What Does God Look Like?

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