Often times you might have wondered how God looks like. We’ve seen pictures of what God might look like. Pedagogical pictures to assist the young in their spiritual journey of a relatively old man with white hair and white beard, also dressed in white perhaps, sometimes on a cloud or on a golden chair with a crown. We’ve seen famous paintings as well like The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo where God is creating the first human. This leads to two questions:
- Why do we try to personify God?
- Do we really need a picture of God?
Why do we try to personify God?
Humanity has ‘always’ felt that something bigger than humans themselves created them, and the sun and the moon, the earth and the sea, plants and animals. Humans have built huge monuments to worship whatever god or gods they believed is greater than they are. Examples of these are the pyramids of Egypt, the Megalithic Temples in Malta, the Teocalli of the Aztecs, and the list goes on.
The reason for worshipping gods varied. Humans have asked for balance, for the rain, for fertility… The gods were many… the sun, the moon, a cat, a dog… the reasons for choosing such gods varied, depending on the geography, the season… The fact is that humans recognised a higher being existed because of how the world around them functioned, and this remains the reality.
I am not an expert in medicine nor in psychology, so what I will say next is my mere observation. Our brains enjoy detecting patterns, when we make friends we try to connect, and we do this by finding what is common in each other so that we can relate. This is exactly why, in my opinion, we try to imagine what God looks like even today and we try to personify Him in pictures, statues, etc. We want to relate to that higher being because we know our limitations, we need that Being. Yes, even though we know He is greater than us, we still feel the need to connect, so we imagine that He is a person too (i.e., that old man with white hair and beard).
Do we really need a picture of God?
Yes and no. Personifying God in pictures and in other works of art, helps us remember that we are not alone; that something greater is holding things in balance. For this reason, yes personifying God helps us to an extent. And what about the ‘no’? The answer to this question is found in the very first Book of the Bible, the Genesis. The creation narrative, which is unfortunately often times misinterpreted, answers most of our existential questions and this is indeed one of them. It explicitly states that God created humanity in His image and likeness (Gen 1:27). In His image… image… each and every human being is in God’s image.
Humanity is not a beta test, which will be forgotten and discarded once the programme bugs are found. Nor is it a prototype that will be destroyed once version two comes out. God created each and every human based on His image. Not enough words exist to describe God’s greatness and power, yet He created us in His image. We do not need a picture that has to constantly remind us of God if we are able to look at other fellow humans and recognise God’s work, appreciate it and cherish it.
Conclusion
What is the point of this post? Can’t we try to picture God again? Of course we can. The point is that we cannot just know that we are created in Imago Dei (in God’s Image) and stop there. We need to understand this concept, digest it and see God in other humans. Seeing God in other humans means looking at other humans with an open heart, treating humans with dignity because they are God’s project after all. Is this an easy task? Of course not, but this is what makes us human. We need to recognise that we have our limitations, our weaknesses and we need to embrace them and accept that other human beings are have their own limitations and weaknesses too. We need to remember that we are all God’s plan, God’s investment because we are all created in Imago Dei.
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