Wow! Great discussion on that first post! Let’s see if we can stir up a little more! ;)

Alistair Begg recently finished a fantastic series on the 10 commandments. He noted that the first commandment tells us that we must worship the correct God. With the second command he stated, “It is not enough to worship the correct God, but the correct God must be worshipped correctly.” He goes on to say:

“We content ourselves with the fact that since we don’t have any graven images in our homes, or haven’t been dancing around any religious totem poles lately, that presumably we aren’t in violation of this command. But what we’re going to discover, is that the essence of idolatry… is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of God. That is, the coming to God with imaginations which are more the product of our fertile minds than they are of any Biblical revelation…” He later states, “Idolatry exists not only in the worship of false gods, but also of the worship of the True God in false ways!”

Any time we attempt to create an image of God it is sinful. Why? Because we will always, always mess it up! We cannot even conceive of God in His fullness, let alone capture that fullness in some way that is tangible. Even our best guess of who and what He is will miss the mark and pervert the understanding of Who He is in some way.

Begg points out that in the construction of the tabernacle, God gives extremely detailed instructions about the construction and decoration of the tabernacle. There is absolutely no representation of God anywhere in the tabernacle! God does not reveal or describe Himself in an image – the only authorized “image of God” is mankind! We are created in His image – the reality of who He is is pictured on a small scale in His creation of humanity. As I mentioned in a reply to one of the comments from the last post:
God is righteous and just, and we have a conscience and that reflects this.
God is sovereign, and we have will and responsibility.
God is loving, and we have the capacity to love and be loved.
God is omniscient, and we have minds, imaginations, and the ability to use reason and logic.
God is omnipotent, and we have power over our domains and the ability to influence our world.
God is eternal, we are immortal.
Even humanity’s “image-bearing” deals with attributes, not visible images.

I recently threw away a perfectly good Bible story book that we had been given for my daughter. Why? On the very first page there was a representation of God the Father at creation, wearing this strange white flowing robe, sporting a long white beard, and holding birds in His hands. Why did I throw it out? My daughter would grow up with a reduced, soft view of God the Father that reduces his glory and transcendence down to a grandpa in a white bathrobe. I’m sure this was done with good intentions- trying to make God understandable and friendly-seeming to children. There is just no way to accurately capture God’s nature in fullness in an image, either a literal image like a sculpture or painting, or an imagined one!

So, this is my beef. Even if you overlook what I discussed in the last post about the slaughter of a Biblical philosophy of genders in this book, even the fact that Young attempts to represent the members of the Trinity with physical descriptors just is not acceptable! Yes, yes, yes… I understand that he wasn’t actually saying that God the Father actually looks like Elousia and that he was merely trying to represent the character of God as he saw it, but that’s the problem – he was trying to represent the character of God as he saw it in a way completely not supported by Scripture!

So, what way is supported by Scripture? There isn’t one! We just are never given a physical representation of God outside of the coming of Christ! Ever! We are given descriptions of God’s nature and relationship to us, ie: shepherd, father, etc. We are given personifications to describe God’s involvement in humanity (he is described as having eyes, arms, etc as descriptive personifications), but that is it.

Why? Again – we will always, always mess up trying to describe God in an image of some kind! Even in our minds! I realize that this probably sounds extreme to some, but I think that the very premise of The Shack is unbiblical. He is describing God in a way God does not describe Himself. He is putting words in the mouth of God that God has not said. And no matter how pure your motives are, we will always mess this up.

If you haven’t read the book, I would say the majority of the text is dialogue between Mack, the main human character, and various members of the Trinity. Which means, Young has written about 250 pages full of the “words of God” and descriptions of Him that are extra-biblical. Not to mention that I think they were often completely wrong to begin with.

Young has created an inaccurate picture of God in the minds of millions of readers. Like I said earlier, even if I agreed with him on everything else, it’s still inaccurate – we simply cannot capture the fullness of God accurately. Just like the Bible story book with the grandpa’s bathrobe picture, I’m sure that Young was well intentioned. He’s trying to make God understandable, friendly-seeming, knowable to people. And by doing so, he misrepresented the nature of God Himself.

God is only understandable to us to a very finite point – and what He wants us to know He has written in His Word. I believe that, in our quest to understand God, we frequently reduce Him down to something we can grasp and rob Him of glory. I have heard so many people say that reading The Shack has completely changed the way they view God. Do we understand how scary this is? We have been given one, and only one, book that fully encapsulates what God wants us to know about Himself.

Not only do we need to understand this inherent flaw in The Shack, not only should we be quick to discard anything which seeks to image our God in an unauthorized way, we need to guard our minds. If you ever catch yourself saying or thinking, “I just like to picture God as _____” it’s idolatry. Ouch!

If you are new to this blog, I encourage you to read through at least some of the posts on our journey through the Old Testament. God has given us a story much more full and gripping than The Shack, He has revealed Himself much more clearly than in Young’s Elousia, His plan is amazing – and it’s all in Scripture. If we would put down our Christian fiction and pick up the Bible, that’s what would truly change our understanding of God in all the fullness and richness of Who He is.

You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.
Deuteronomy 4:15-18