Elemental Season 1 - Day 10

Here is a question or two to ponder; does our understanding of God limit God? Is God beholden to the words that we say about God? 
I guess another way to ask the question is to ask if we create God in the image of our words, or even our own image. 

What?

I know that is confusing. We clearly don’t make images or idols of God for ourselves, but sometimes, our words try to capture God just as much as wood or metal, or stone. Our words can become the same kind of idols that Old Testament Prophets railed against in book after book after book. There was a mandate not to make images of Yahweh precisely because they did not want to limit the way that they understood who God was and is. We do this by allowing our words to become prisons where God is held, unable to grow larger and develop into the God that he actually might be. We then fall in love with the words that we use, and somehow think that God is relegated to being exactly what we have worked out for God to be. 

The danger in this is that we limit our understanding of God, and then we assume that God conforms to our understanding. The problem here is that we become pretty certain that we are right and then we have made God in the image of our own words and understanding. 

So let us do a “what if” exercise. What if God were vastly different then what we imagined God to be? What if God had a greater love, greater tolerance, and a greater understanding of who we are than we think? The implications of this could be that God is willing to let a lot more people into heaven than we could have ever considered appropriate. What if God is really interested in getting people into heaven, getting people healthy and whole here on earth, and is much more forgiving to us than we have ever been to ourselves? 

What are the implications of this? 

It would probably mean that we need to be a whole lot more gracious. A whole lot less certain of our truth and a great deal more willing to listen to our neighbors, friends, and others who might not believe in God the same way that we do. 

Does this worry you a bit? Maybe it should. 

If we say these things, are we denying the truth that we have lived for so long? 

I don’t think so. I think we are challenging some assumptions that our language and human understanding have relegated to us, rather than really being able to allow God to be who God is, which might be a bit beyond our understanding. However, this does not mean that we cease to work to understand God, it just means that our assumptions have a tendency to limit us a bit. 

1. What language do you use when you talk about God? Is it limiting or expanding? 
2. What challenges your assumptions about God? 
3. What role does Jesus play in your understanding of who God is and his limitless love for us?