On Photographs of Ourselves

Have you ever looked at a picture of yourself and thought, "Wow, that completely does not look like me." Well, I had one of those moments today.

I was getting ready this morning, fumbling around with some clothes on top of my dresser, when I knocked over some pictures. As I picked up the fallen portraits and put them back on the dresser, I began to look at some of them. One of the pictures was of me standing there with a friend of mine at IMPACT, a summer camp I work at every year. As I looked at the photo, I was repulsed by the image of myself. I looked weird, my smile was bad, I looked ugly--it was totally unrealistic. OK, so I fit all of those descriptions, but the picture still didn't really look like me at all.

It was kind of irritating, looking at a portrait of myself and realizing that I hated it. I didn't feel that it was an adequate representation of me. It made me look completely different. It was not a true depiction of who I really am.

I think that God feels the same way sometimes. We sit here on earth and paint our little pictures of God, making him look how we want. I'm not talking about the painting of Jesus that's in your Sunday School classroom or a mural on a church wall in Europe. I'm talking about how we as people take God's characteristics and narrow them down or twist them around until we make God look nothing like he really is.

How do we do that? We make God into a God of prosperity, seeking blessings and wealth. We make him into a God of war, asking for protection and victory on the battlefield (and on the football field). We make him into a God of the comfort, wanting encouragement and a sugar-coated Gospel. We make him into a God of popularity, trying to make our faith something "cool" or "modern." God is not any of these, or at least he's not just one of these.

In Exodus 20, God gave Moses the second Commandment, saying, "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God." Now, you might be sitting there thinking that you've never carved a wooden statue or made a golden calf, so you're OK. However, when we make God into what we think he is or what want from him, we are making a god (little "g") that is false. It is not a true representation of what God is, and we begin falling into the sin of idolatry.

God is so much bigger than we can ever fathom. Why do we try to fit him into a box that we create? We can't do it! It's time that we begin to see God for all he is, for all of his characteristics, even the ones that we don't particularly like.

I'm tired of little gods. God is, too. So let's stop making them.