Belief in the Invisible God

God is invisible. I suppose I should say that God chooses not to show himself. If God wanted to show himself, he surely could. When we say that God is invisible, it is in no way a slight against His power... in fact, it underscores it.

Exodus 33:
18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

God is so utterly different from mankind, so much more powerful, so much more intense, so much more... well, just more... that man would die if God were to fully reveal Himself to him. God also does not give us images to see Him. In fact, he commands that we not create images with which to worship Him.

Exodus 20:
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands [2] of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Leviticus 19:
4 Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am the Lord your God.

When my wife and I go to see a movie based on a book we've read, I usually enjoy it. My wife, however, gets annoyed. "That's not how it happened in the book." This has always been the case. The movie is never the same as the book. There are good reasons for this... sometimes the words of the book leave room for ambiguity, to leave room for the reader to ponder, yet in a movie it is hard to leave ambiguity. Most often, the book has so much detail that a verbatim movie would be so long audiences would lose interest. This illustrates the negative side of images used in worship. God is so much more than than we can comprehend, that any image created by us would be an epic failure at portraying God.

There is a positive side of images used in worship (I do not mean positive as in "good", I only mean it like "added"). Once my wife and I have seen a book turned movie a few times, we both find that the movie heavily influences the way we read the book. For instance, when I read the 6th Harry Potter book, The Half Blood Prince, I see in my mind Ron as Rupert Gint and Harry as Daniel Radcliffe. Even the character Dudley, who in the books is a blonde, is burned into my mind as being the dark haired Harry Melling. When my wife reads to me on long car trips, the voice she reads for Hagrid matches the actor, Robbie Coltrane's (my wife does a great impression, I might add). This illustrates the point that images in worship sometimes introduce or "add" notions that aren't there. They might cause someone to be "blinded" by what they see or have seen.

Spiritual blindness is truly the matter at hand. To be blind of something is to not see it. This is, perhaps, the antithesis of faith. Faith is knowing of things which cannot be seen with natural senses. It is agreement that these things exist. It is also trusting, or a steadfast assurance in those things.

Hebrews 11:
11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

I think this gets to a very fundamental theological point. Although God could reveal himself in a way that is undeniable, He has chosen to reveal Himself in ways which are subtle. God hasn't recently caused the sun to stand still in the sky, or to flood the entirety of the earth. Instead, He relates to His people through revelation and faith. Consider this: Jesus performed miracles before large crowds. There were some who saw them and believed, while there were some who saw them and did not. Some responded in faith and saw Jesus for who He really was.

Colossians 1:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

God's revelation of himself is like this. Two people might read the bible and one respond in faith and the other not. Faith is crucial to having a relationship with the invisible God. When I say that God is invisible, I do not mean that He does or has not revealed Himself or conveyed truths through things which are visible. The bible is one example. The sacraments are another: God conveys spiritual truths through the sacraments. Baptism visibly represents the washing away of sin (something which is invisible). Circumcision visibly represented for Israel the cutting away of their hardness of heart. The Lord's Supper, or Eucharist, is something that can be seen, touched, tasted, and smelled, but it points to Jesus's sacrificial death on the cross which is not physically seen, touched, tasted, nor smelled today.

Incidentally, I agree with scripture that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Some have made statues and paintings of Jesus. Such actions should give God-fearing people serious pause. God the son chose to take on a human body and become flesh. This was God's act of self-revelation. It would seem a great error to take the Mona Lisa to a Kinko's, print off a black and white 8 1/2" x 11", and hang it on my wall. Doing so is no service to Mona, and shows no respect to Leonardo Da Vinci. We should guard against idolatry. Indeed, it seems that some have elevated bread and wine to the position of Jesus Himself. I won't get into all the arguments for why they would believe this, but I will state firmly that if the bread and wine are not God, but are worshipped as if they were, those worshiping and teaching the error will one day answer to the invisible God on charges of idolatry.

1 John 3:
2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears [1] we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

I charge those reading this, as I do myself, to rely on the invisible God by faith. I've heard of someone saying, "I've had lots of friends that have died. I don't hear any of them coming back to tell me how great heaven is." I'm saddened by this person's loss, but moreso for their lack of faith. Someone has come back from the dead: Jesus Christ. He has told us in the bible and through the preaching of the word what we must believe to go to heaven. Do we believe Him? Do we serve Him? Do we have hope in the invisible God? If not, the best hope we could have is that He does not exist.