A Vision of Their Own Imagination
Craig Smith
“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’” (Ez 13:2, NASB; see also Jer 23:16)
In my almost fifty years of licensed Alliance ministry, I’ve been privileged to have had several articles published in our Alliance Life magazine. There has also been an article or two that didn’t pass the editorial sniff test and make it to the pages of our denominational mouthpiece. This points out the significance our leadership takes in overseeing what is included in this important messenger within our movement.
Recently, I read a four-page spread in this year’s first installment of Alliance Life magazine titled, “What if God is Better than I Ever Knew.” In it the author offered the readers a practice and a poem. It was a call to “imagine God” by constructing a mental picture of him and to do so “without analyzing or judging,” but instead to receive this image “as helpful information.”
I unequivocally state that the author has the liberty of free expression, and I recognize that in poetry we permit a certain level of license. However, when prose and poetry are theological in nature, we are compelled, as the Scriptures admonish us, to offer a biblically based response. It’s what God said to Ezekiel: “Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’” What God’s Holy Word has to say is to guide the believer in processing concepts, thoughts, and directives. This is what is required of us if we are truly committed to the authority of the Scriptures as our only rule of divine faith and practice [1].
Though scripture provides us multiple metaphors for God and his way among us, it commands us against turning this poetic imagery into constructed images that we approach as himself. Psalm 84:11 announce that the Lord is “a sun and a shield” to his people. And yet Exodus 20:4 forbids the making of any carved image of God after the likeness of anything “in heaven above.” Beware, we can also whittle God down in our minds. A. W. Tozer counseled against constructing a mental image of God.
When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand [2].
Coming from a culturally animistic background [3], I would have to agree with Tozer. We understand clearly what idols made of the hands are and the supernatural powers they possess. I’m glad Tozer doesn’t stop there, though, as he suggests “an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.”
Concerning Statements Made in the Practice and Poem
With this in mind, I would caution against the instruction of the author to “picture God” or “imagine God’s face” and to take notice of “his body language and posture toward you.” Keep in mind that “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). Our knowledge of God comes, as Scripture teaches us, by way of general revelation, where we may observe in creation God’s divine attributes, power, creativity, and sovereignty over all he has made (Rom 1:20). Again, God has revealed himself more particularly in the special revelation of his Word. There in story and command God communicates himself to us. There we find those few accounts where God grants to select individuals a vision of himself, which leaves them groveling on their faces in awe and groping for words to describe the indescribable. On these occasions, what they saw is related to us with language that places them and us at a distance from the revelation. We are put with them in the cleft of the rock. They give us the account of the vision of God granted to them by using such words as “like unto,” and “in the appearance of,” etc. As such, we recognize that their encounters were real, and yet they were beyond their imaginations and ours. Finally, the dearest revelation of God to us comes through that of the Son. Jesus, God himself veiled in flesh, shows us what God is pleased to make known of himself at present. Let us cautiously seek no more of God than what God has curated to reveal to us.
Go with me now as we look into and evaluate several points presented in a poem the author offers to those who have carried out the practice of imagining God.
The question is asked, “What if God likes me the way I was made? What if God wouldn’t have me any other way?”
The biblical response is, yes and no! Yes, he likes us the way we were made, because we were made in his image and likeness. And we are his highest level of creation. But make no mistake, we are fallen creatures due to our own sin. He can’t have us any other way but redeemed through the shed blood of his one and only Son on Calvary’s cross. God reckons all who try and come to him in any other way as lost, “without hope and without God in this world” (Eph 2:12b).
“What if God isn’t mad or mean? What if God is exceedingly compassionate towards my needs?” the author continues.
You can’t get through much of the Scriptures before you are aware that He is extremely angry at sin while extremely in love with the sinner. Some have tried to rewrite the Scriptures to present sinners in the hands of an angry God to be sinners in the hands of a loving God.
And, yes, there were times when the Lord expressed anger with his people, Israel, as well as with us in the church. John the Revelator said to the seven churches that God was pleased with some things, “but nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee” (Rev 2:4, KJV). He has the capacity within himself to be an angry and yet loving God to mankind. To posture God as lowering the temperature of his anger may assist the unsaved individual to surmise, “He is not that upset with us, after all!” A view of God that I don’t think the C&MA wants to promote.
Next the author asks, “What if God cares more about who I become than what I believe? What if God invites me to trust myself and be who I was created to be?”
This statement seems to offer the reader allowance to live anyway they want, because what we believe is of secondary concern to God. How can that statement be aligned with biblical truth? God is extremely concerned about what we believe because our eternal salvation is based exclusively on the special revelation of biblical truth. Acts 4:12 says, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved.”
It goes without saying that if we trust in ourselves, we will never become what God wants us to be. Otherwise, there’d be no need for the gospel.
Again, the author ponders, “What if God desires my presence and my rest even more than my obedience and my selflessness?”
God doesn’t only desire our obedience; He requires it above all else. God says to Saul through the prophet Samuel, “Does the Lord have as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than a sacrifice, and to pay attention is better than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22).
The New Testament is clear; we must approach the Father through his Son and through his cross. John 14:6 is clear: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.’” Jesus also says that if we live in him and love him, we will obey his commandments (John 14:15, 21).
The author’s personal response to the question she raises is an emphatic, “Yes,” deeply owning these convictions herself.
It ends with, “What if God is better than I knew? What if I’m deeply loved the whole way through? What if there’s nothing to earn and nothing to prove? And what if that’s absolutely true for you, too?”
I affirm the author’s desire to connect the reader with our good God. And yet I am deeply concerned. It would seem the permission to construct, without self-judgment, an image of God in our minds is unwise. And may lead us to direct our prayers and thoughts towards something other than God himself. As Augustine confessed, “For he that knoweth Thee not may call on Thee as other than Thou art.” Upon this fashioned god we may impose the voice of our own desires and dreams and syncretize the convictions and instructions of this world with his ways. How much better to seek the lofty revelation of God found in his word and bow before him as he speaks to us through it. Dear friends, those who hope for the best, tell us that we are not on a theological slippery slope. But the image that came to my mind as I read this article was, doesn’t it seem, at least, there is an icy road just up ahead that is very dangerous? You will have to analyze and judge for yourselves if it is so.
Craig Smith - Tribal Rescue Ministries, Inc. (An Affiliated Enterprise of The C&MA) - Cass Lake, Minnesota
[1] C&MA Statement of Faith, Section 1, Article 4.
[2] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy. (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 14.
[3] I am a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe from Minnesota. As such, I come from a people with a deep understanding of the darker side of the supernatural world prior to coming to Christ.