A More Christ-Like God
What is God like?
Some inherit their image of God via their parents or whatever religion indoctrinated them as children. Children are usually God-aware from an early age. Their first instinct is to know God and they desire to be faithful to Him.
A child born into a Christian context will be drawn to the Trinitarian God by default. Now imagine that same child with the same desire to worship God, but born in a Muslim district of Pakistan, a Hindu region of India or an animist tribe in South America. Won’t their natural leaning be towards the God of their clan? Is religious choice, then, just an accident of birth?
Others infer their image of God through life experiences, whether joyful or painful. When life is abundant with human flourishing, we might image God as prosperous and generous. But if struck with calamity, it is typical for people to wonder whether God is punishing them, whether justly or unjustly. The book of Job explores this dilemma.
Creating God in Our Own Image
Many believers inadvertently create God in their own image or that of their culture. Have you noticed that tolerant people or tolerant nations incline to tolerant models of God? Or that angry people or aggressive nations grow an angry and aggressive deity? We might rightly ask, who made whom?
Truly, we are prone to project onto God our limited human ideas, as if God were a man. Or because the universe is so great, we imagine Him as a sort of superman, a colossus, sometimes with many arms. In matriarchal societies, God is sometimes conceived as a fantastically fertile mother who birthed all we see into existence.
Believers and atheists alike frequently construct images of God that are toxic, then either fear God or revolt against Him. Our hearts need cleansing of these toxic images because, ultimately, we mimic the God we worship.
Some notions of God are harsh: God the tyrant king, God the punishing judge, God the wicked stepparent, God the ‘mighty smiter.’
Others attempt to manipulate God through their worship or prayers, as if God were a doting grandparent, a genie in a lantern or a cosmic vending machine.
A third group experiences God as distant and silent—like a deadbeat dad—unsupportive, uncaring, not there when I needed him. Small wonder the “nones and dones” are in a faith-exodus by the millions!
But if there is a God, what is he like? The Bible claims, “God is love.” This Love is more than a projection; he’s a projectile! He’s entered our world in the flesh. To see this God, Scripture tells us to look at Jesus Christ, God with skin!
What if God is Like Jesus?
Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen my Father” (John 14:9). St Paul wrote, “Jesus is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and “all the fulness of the Godhead dwelled in him” (Colossians 2:9). We read how “Jesus perfectly mirrored God and is stamped with God’s own nature” (Hebrews 1:3 MSG).
So to see God’s true image, we look at the life and character of Jesus Christ. We especially watch how he loved people, especially those on the margins, the abused and the excluded. We also see him face down religious bullies and spiritual abusers.
To see God’s true image, we look at the life and character of Jesus Christ. Click To TweetBut our clearest image of God comes into focus on the Cross. What does the Cross show us about God? That God is self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering Love.
Self-giving because God poured his love into the world through Jesus. Radically forgiving because even when wicked men conspired to torture and murder him, he forgave them. And co-suffering because Christ willingly experienced the depths of the human condition, including death, and he overcame it all!
God is Exactly Like Jesus
So the New Testament teaches that God is exactly like Jesus. It concludes that Jesus Christ is “God, the Son” incarnate. It announces an achingly beautiful gospel that says: the Christlike God has always loved you, has always been with you, is always for you. God has already forgiven you. And he wants you to know and experience the divine Love that never gives up on you.
God, the shepherd, who goes down into the ditch to find lost and tangled sheep. God, the Father who runs to welcome the wayward child home. God, the crucified Lord who, when humanity rejected and killed him, forgave and reconciled us to himself. God, the risen Christ, who is alive, present among us.
This God—the Christlike God—knows us, loves us, and wants us to know Him.
For additional reading, check out Brad's book, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel.
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