Drawing Portraits of God

I was a young teen by the time that I had begun to suspect that something was wrong with the traditional portrait of God that I was being shown. The picture drawn for me was of a God who lurked, unseen and unheard, in wait of wrongdoing. When sinfulness was discovered, this angry, wrathful God would pounce, like a lion in the night, and express righteous rage for the unknowing sinner, tearing the sinner limb from limb. Worse, I was told that God would condemn wrongdoers to hell...forever. Eternal suffering was the fate of all who failed to accept God and do the "right things."

This was a God of condemnation. It was a God of wrath and fear and anger. This was a God who distrusted God's own children, who controlled them and manipulated them with threat of severe and eternal punishment. This was the "Tough Love" God whom I grew to despise. I hid from this God. I distrusted this God's will and certainly rejected this God's people. What good, I wondered, came out of following such a God?

As a teen, I rejected the very notion of deity, since the only portrait that I had been shown was one of condemnation, anger, violence and eternal damnation. Along with rejecting the notion of deity, I necessarily rejected church. I could not be active in a church that taught a deity that I refused to accept or acknowledge. If the church wanted me to believe, then it would have to draw for me a different portrait of God. The one that had been put before me made no sense to me.

Another portrait of God began to gradually emerge. Perhaps it was the result of reading or spiritual and philosophical reflection or life experience, but sometime in my early 20's I began to perceive something entirely different. God need not be understood as condemnation, anger, violence and eternal damnation. God can be drawn differently.

I began to perceive the inverse of the portrait of deity that had been painted in my youth, a gracious God, one who provides the tools necessary for making the world a better place...for every person. This new picture displayed a God who equipped, empowered and enabled, who trusted God's children to utilize the gifts that are given in order to live in healthy and productive ways. This was not a God of division but of unity. This was not a God of anger but kindness. This was not a God of retribution but forgiveness and mercy.

By the time I reached seminary, my theology was fully invested in the inverse of the traditional portrait that I had been shown. What I learned there supported the alternative picture of the God of Jesus Christ. (By the way, I think that this dichotomy exists in all religions. It has little to do with God and a great deal more to do with power, manipulation and control of religious authorities.) I determined then that I would commit myself to a vocation of drawing this alternative vision of God for others.

The ministry of following a gracious God is, ironically, more difficult than a ministry that projects a God of rules, regulations and morals. A Gracious God calls us to be primarily concerned with others, while the legalistic God requires only that I be right with the laws. I have since discovered that it is difficult indeed to unlearn the legalistic, angry God that, apparently, many of us were taught. It is difficult in the extreme to allow persons to believe themselves equipped and empowered for ministry that reflects a gracious deity.

While appropriate words may allude us, and while pedagogy fails us, I hope that all who read The Shiloh Insider will be moved to live into faithfulness to the deity drawn for us in the gracious and merciful acts of Jesus Christ. We are not a completed portrait of a church that lives from the image of a gracious God, but we are working at it. I hope that you will join us.