“How Did I Develop My Picture of God?”

Does God have a dark side? C.L.I.C. - a tool for developing better contextual perspective to help us better understand hard scriptures.

Have You Ever Asked Yourself, “How Did I Develop My Picture of God?” Sometimes, our ideas about certain beliefs, especially God, and foundational truths, have been so formed by our families, communities (especially religious), and early childhood training, that we have never stopped to ask ourselves, “How did I develop my picture of God? ‘Is my picture of God accurate?’ ‘Is it based on what the Scriptures teach about the character of God, or on some misrepresentation of God’s character?’ ‘Or, did I develop my picture of God from other sources, like systematic theologies or even other religions or philosophies?”

Many times, as Christians our view of God was developed by Sunday school teachers and early childhood religious training. When we are young, we tend to honor our parents and other adults in our communities, without questioning if they have a correct view of God or not. We assume they do. We tend to grow up in communities that support the views we have held and been taught in Sunday school, and all seems well in the world.

The problem begins when as teenagers, college students, or young adults we face people, or events, which seem to stare right in face of all our religious training and loudly declare that the picture of God we were raised with is a lie and it can’t be trusted! Often, this becomes a watershed moment in our lives. One of the following things tends to happen at that moment:

1. We believe the challenger of our faith, lose our trust in God, and either become a non-believer or functional non-believer. A functional non-believer is a person who still holds on to the idea of the existence of God, but no longer attempts to have any relationship with Him.

2. We don’t believe the challenger, but the weight of their arguments brings us to a point of hopeless resignation and despair that we don’t really know or understand God at all. “How can God be loving and ALL powerful and still allow all the evil, heartache and human suffering in the world?” “Doesn’t it even say in the Bible that God did terrible things to people when He judged them?” (i.e.…Sodom and Gomorrah, the Genesis Flood, the ground swallowing the Children of Israel, the complete extermination of the Canaanites men, women, children and animals) People in this category usually still go to Church, but there is no passion for God in their lives. They continue to believe in and hold to their religious training blindly, even though they have no answers for their challengers. They write it all off and say, “God is just too big of a mystery to understand,” and they leave it at that. This works for many people until one day life confronts them with a tragic event that will expose that they are standing on sand rather than the solid rock of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

3. The third response is someone who becomes deeply affected by the questions. They may even lose their faith for a while. However, these negative assertions about God’s character cause a stirring in their souls and they can’t rest until they get answers to the difficult questions.

I believe the third response is ultimately the healthiest, even if a person turns away from God for a while. It is healthier because it is more honest. When we are dealing with our core beliefs and the foundations of our lives, sometimes it requires brutal honesty with ourselves. It is only when we are absolutely committed to see the true nature and character of God that it begins to come into view. Most of us have been lost in an ocean of bad theological ideas about God until we see that Flag waving in the distance on Mount Calvary. That Flag, God’s Banner, God’s Standard is Jesus. “At that time the new king from the family [root] of Jesse will stand as a banner [standard; signal flag] for all peoples [nations]. The nations [Gentiles] will come together around [rally to; or seek guidance from] him, and the place where he lives [his resting place] will be filled with glory.” Isaiah 11:10 (Expanded Bible)

This is where we begin and end at Coffee with the Clancys; that the truest, most clear, the exact image of God the Father ~ is Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of God that we MUST look to in order to identify the true character of God. Starting any place else will lead around a blind corner and into a dead end street. Many Christians have a blended view of God from the Bible; placing the revelation of God in the Old Testament on equal footing with the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. This in fact is an error, because the New Testament scriptures clearly show us a better picture of the nature and character of God through Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 1:3 (NIV) “The Son (Jesus Christ) is the radiance of God’s glory and THE EXACT REPRESENTATION of his being”

“Jesus is the revelation of God that we MUST look to in order to identify the true character of God. Starting any place else will lead around a blind corner and into a dead end street.”

If, we as Christians would start with the picture of God revealed in Christ Jesus, our pictures of God would not go all wrong. Jesus is much more than a prominent character in the last twenty percent of our Bible. Jesus is much more than just one aspect of the character of God. Our picture of God should not be a synthesis (a blend, mixture) of Old and New Testaments. Our picture of God should reflect what Jesus said in John 14:9, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”

However, many of us have used this blended (synthesis) method at determining what God’s character is like. We read the Old Testament and see an angry wrath-filled God and blend this picture with Jesus who blesses those who curse him, does good to those who do evil to him and prays for those who persecute him! We shrug our shoulders and say, “God is a mystery, who can know Him.” I have heard many people say that Jesus is just one fragment, one aspect, of the nature and character of God. Jesus is one mirror on the disco-ball we call God, who has many facets. Ultimately what we are saying is that God is responsible for both good and evil, light and darkness, peace and calamity, joy and suffering, rainbows and tsunamis, life and death, because God is IN CONTROL of everything. Perhaps you have heard this famous saying, “The devil can’t do anything to me which hasn’t already come through (been approved by) the LOVING HANDS OF MY HEAVENLY FATHER.”

In this mindset, that tsunami that destroyed your entire family, your entire city, which you thought was the work of the devil, only came to you through the loving hands of God your Heavenly Father, who “really knows” what is best for you. So that destructive force that killed all of the people you loved and cherished the most, was allowed to come to you by your Heavenly Father, because He is either going to teach you some “mysterious spiritual lesson,” or use it to bring about some “greater good” or some “higher good” in your life. When embracing these ideas, you end up with a God who has a dark side, a god that looks a lot more like the Hindu God Kali, than the revelation of God in Jesus. Kali symbolically gives blessings to her worshippers with her right hand and is a fierce destroyer of life and limb with her left. ( Kali link: http://hinduism.about.com/od/hindugoddesses/a/makali.htm )

When we attribute horrible things to be “Acts of God,” we reveal a picture of God who is both life giver and destroyer.

The problem is that the New Testament emphatically denies this position. The New Testament strongly confirms this idea in Hebrews 1:3, “Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being!” Furthermore, 1 John 1:5 asserts, “This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.”

Hebrews 1:3 (NIV) “The Son (Jesus Christ) is the radiance of God’s glory and THE EXACT REPRESENTATION of his being.”

So what do we do with all the fire and brimstone stuff we see in the Old Testament? I believe it has to do with skewed perspectives and missing information. Have you ever considered that the Old Testament only mentions Satan or the devil 19 times? 14 of those verses are located in a single book, the Book of Job. In contrast, the New Testament mentions Satan over 200 times, in a lot smaller volume of writing. So, other than the Book of Job, there are only five times the devil is mentioned in the Old Testament. That is astounding isn’t it? Have you ever considered the fact that not one Old Testament patriarch, not Moses, David, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel and so on, ever prayed EVEN ONE prayer resisting or opposing the devil? How can this be when prayers to cast out demons and instructions to resist or oppose the devil are so prevalent in the New Testament?

This is just part of the problem when reading the Old Testament and trying to understand the meaning of certain passages. I think it is sort of like the click of the shutter of a camera when we are looking at difficult passages in the Old Testament. A camera captures part of the truth of an event, just not completely. When you take a picture many times there is a lot more information surrounding you that is not captured in the picture. The sounds of birds chirping, cars driving by, children playing are all there and none of these are captured by the camera. Also, depending on the perspective of the camera, much of the scene could be left out of view. If the perspective is close up you can see the snake wrapped around your feet, but you miss the rainbow in the sky in the distance. If the perspective is on the horizon you can see the storm clouds in the distance, but you miss the beautiful flowers at your feet. Many times, when we are reading about difficult things in the Old Testament that we can’t seem to understand, we are missing key pieces of the perspective that we need in order to understand it correctly.

I have developed an acronym called C.L.I.C., like the sound of a shutter on a camera, in order to help us understand what pieces of the puzzle we may be missing. We need to ask these questions and dig in deeper if the literal interpretation of the Old Testament scriptures do not match, or are contrary with, the revelation of God in Jesus.

The meaning of C.L.I.C.:

C ~ Culture: When trying to understand the writings of any culture, much less ancient cultures, we need to consider how that particular cultures traditions impacted their beliefs and their language. Styles of writing which may have been very prevalent in ancient cultures may not be prevalent today and in fact they may not even exist. For example, Apocalyptic writings are an ancient writing style that we really do not understand in our modern times. When we are trying to read and interpret prophetic, apocalyptic books like Daniel and the book of Revelation we need to take much care in order to make sure we really get what the author is trying to say and not READ INTO IT ideas which may be popular in our culture, but did not apply at the time of the writing of the particular scripture. In Revelation 19:13, there is this ominous picture of Christ coming to judge the world. He is on a white horse and His robe has been dipped in blood. This is very scary apocalyptic language until you begin to think about an interesting aspect of that culture and era. In that culture warriors never went to war with their robes dipped in blood. They only came back from war wearing robes dipped in blood to show how much of their enemy’s blood they had spilled, parading for everyone to see how victorious they had been. So why is Jesus wearing a robe that has already been dipped in blood? Because Jesus forgave His enemies, and His robe is dipped in His own blood!

L ~ Language: There are many nuances of language that a literal reading of the scripture does not convey. Do we fully understand the nuances of the particular language in question, or are there aspects of them that we may be missing? Do we know what type of book is being written and what kind of language is being used? Is it prophetic, apocalyptic, poetic, or a song? Could understanding this concept help us get a clearer idea on what is being said? Example: What if a thousand years from now someone read a story in a news report from our time that said it was raining cats and dogs? They don’t understand the nuances of 21st Century American English They could arrive at some very strange and distorted ideas of what was actually happening; a heavy down pour of rain.

I ~ Interpretation: Interpretation can be as much of an art as it is a science. Because language is so fluid, as well as perspectives which are interpreting the language, interpretation of a particular text can be swayed in very small, but very significant ways.

C ~ Context: Do we understand the context of the people of that time in history? Example: In the Old Testament they had a very incomplete view of the devil, or Satan, and did not fully see him as an enemy of God. They clearly believed God was in total control and ONLY His will ever came to pass. This is very different from what Jesus teaches and how He lived.

Are you starting to see how easy it is to develop an incorrect and inaccurate picture of who God is and what His character is like when we don’t consider the C.L.I.C., of the camera when reading ancient documents?

C.L.I.C. - Culture. Language. Interpretation. Context.

You may ask, “So where do we start?” “How can we begin to understand who God is and what His character is like?” We begin where God says the true wisdom and power of God are, in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

The Good News of the message of Jesus is an incredible revelation about God our loving Heavenly Father. He is not a wrathful judge just waiting for the right moment to strike us with a lightning bolt or smite us with some terrible disease. No, Jesus tells us of an incredibly loving and humble Heavenly Father who deeply loves and values us, more than we can even imagine!

God is a loving Father (according to Luke 6:27-36 and Matthew 5:38-48) who loves those who hate Him, does good to those who do evil to Him, blesses those who curse Him, walks the extra mile, turns the other cheek, loves His enemies, gives His coat to those who took His shirt, He is kind to the unthankful and the evil and He forgives everyone who harms Him! This is the picture, THE PORTRAIT, of the living God as painted by Jesus! How different it looks than all the sum total of our human wisdom combined. The best men can come up with when their ideas of God or ultimate reality are based on human religion and philosophy (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Atheism and even much of the Christian Church) is a God (or core reality) that is the author and responsible for both good and evil.

When you see a picture of God that doesn’t look like Jesus you need to consider the C.L.I.C., and remember that the revelation of God, demonstrated in Jesus is superior to all other revelations. If there is something that you cannot figure out or understand about the picture of God you are seeing, remember there may be an aspect of C.L.I.C. that you are missing. When you find the missing piece, the picture will begin to make sense and it will look more and more like the picture and character of God revealed by, and in the life of Jesus Christ.

“When you see a picture of God that doesn’t look like Jesus, you need to consider the C.L.I.C., and remember that the revelation of God demonstrated in Jesus is superior to all other revelations."

1 John 1:5 New Living Translation (NLT)

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.

At Coffee with the Clancys, we believe Jesus is the fullest and clearest revelation of the love of God, as well as His character and nature. Because of this, we have a VICTORIOUS HOPE AND WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS in the midst of the battles of life. It is our desire to help both believers and non-believers alike to understand the revelation of who God is, as expressed through the person of Jesus Christ. We desire to create a safe place to share, discuss and discover a new perspective and a renewed Hope for Life. We are thankful that many people are being encouraged in the midst of life’s battles; because you, Jesus, bring such a clear revelation that our Father God is Good, and He DOES NOT PARTNER WITH EVIL ~ AT ALL!

#CLIC