Another realization hit me last night as I was reading. I have a different conceptualizaton of Jesus and of God.
When I think of Jesus, the Son of Man, I picture him in his humanity and conceptualize the kind of guy I think he was: kind, loving, gentle, compassionate, real, relational, just, experiencing a full range of emotions. But a normal human nonetheless.
But somewhere along the line, or at least at certain points in time, I've failed to allow the picture of Jesus, the man portrayed in Scripture (the express image of an invisible God), to inform my conceptualization of God the Father. Somehow, in many ways I imagine God the Father as different than God the Son. When I think of Father I think of him as: powerful, authoritative, judge. Yes, still loving and compassionate, but there's something about "God will strike you down" that I ascribe to Father and not Son.
Jesus was completely human and I am beginning to realize that his humanity does not exist apart from or above and beyond his reflection of the image of God, but that his humanity reflects the image of the Father as well: i.e., sense of humor, desire for community, relationship and all that that entails (flexibility, respect, boundaries, honor, etc.)
I'm interested to see how the awareness of this split in my mind will impact how I read God the Father when I go back to the gospels.
Interesting. Am I alone in this?
About Me
- Lex
- I love talking to people who challenge me and make me think...shake things up a bit! The closer to polar opposites, the more intriguing. Comfortable is boring. I'm all about stretching and growing. I feel like I've been stagnant for a very long time and I've just begun what is shaping up to be the journey of a lifetime. It's a journey of self-discovery that should help me write something more concrete and certain in the section "About Me". I am separated and hope to be divorced soon. This will close a chapter of tremendous pain in my life that started long before the marriage, before I even met him, in fact. I've been healing from a lot of things. That process has me rethinking everything: my faith, relationships, love, sex, hope, family, politics, dreams, the future. It's an exciting place to be and though often I'm silly and mindless on these pages, I welcome the opportunity to engage with others who'd like to discuss these things as well.
2 comments:
I think I've had a similar struggle with the Holy Spirit as God. As you know, I grew up in an environment where we were taught that the Holy Spirit is some kind of "fire shut up in my bones" that makes me dance a jig, scream, run around the church and otherwise make a fool of myself without my control. A serious injustice to who He is.
The Holy Spirit is God just as the Father is God and Jesus is God, but I sometimes have to remind myself that He's not a sidekick to the others. He is just as fully God and just as fully authoritative.
This whole trinity thing is hard to wrap the human mind around, but it's awe-inspiring that God Himself exists in a community; all parts equal, all parts effective, all parts united. Why can't we?
I believe that Jesus is God in the sesne that we all are. When we go to heaven we leave behind what seperates us from God, sort of like a place where only the little shoulder angel speaks and never the little shoulder devil. I believe that Jesus was able to shut himself off from desire from the wrong things a lot earlier. If you go back before the new testament and read of the miracles performed they could only be done in obedience to God. Particularly in the case of Moses miracles are performed when he obeyed exactly what he was told to do in the spot and time he was told to do it in. I think Jesus was in greater obedience than anyone else ever and therefore was more miraculous. He was able to slough off more of his flesh here on earth and became more God than man before he even got to heaven. At least that's how I see it.
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