If You've Seen Me Series

Last Sunday I asked you to mentally or physically draw a picture of what you think God looks like. It may have sounded silly or trite, but I was very, very serious. As preacher, author, and lecturer Trevor Hudson so powerfully and succinctly put it: “In each of our hearts and minds there is drawn our picture of God” and “the way we live is profoundly shaped by our picture of God” (Hudson, T. Discovering Our Spiritual identity: Practices for God’s Beloved. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2010, p. 13). He goes on to say that when “distortions creep into our picture of God, their negative effects reverberate throughout our lives” (Hudson, ibid., p. 14). He gives some salient examples of the kinds of distortions that can result from our negative pictures or perceptions of God. He writes:

“Those who view God as an impersonal force tend toward a cold and vague relationship with Him. Those who see God as a heavenly tyrant, intent on hammering anyone who wanders outside His laws, seldom abandon themselves with joy to the purposes of His kingdom. Those who imagine God to be a scrupulous bookkeeper, determined to maintain up-to-date accounts of every personal sin and short-coming, rarely acknowledge their inner contradictions and struggles in His presence. Those who regard God as a divine candy machine (just say a prayer and you can get what you want) inevitably end up in disillusionment” (Hudson, ibid., p. 14).

In my case, Hudson’s point became painfully and almost fatally true. For me, God was a Heavenly tyrant, a scrupulous bookkeeper, and the perfect scapegoat for all my problems. Perfect in the sense that I could blame all my mistakes on Him and He never showed up to dispute my accusations … and perfect in the sense that who could stand against God, right? So, I could play the cosmic victim … a sad distortion of our brother Job, sitting atop the garbage heap that I had made of my life and shaking my fist at the heavens and blaming God. And this distortion, as Hudson calls it, took me down into the pits of hell and almost killed me.

What saved my life … what turned me around … was that I literally drew a picture of the God that I had in my mind and in my heart. When I crawled into Alcoholics Anonymous, I had to admit defeat in my battle against the demons of alcoholism. That part was easy. In admitting my defeat, however, I had to admit that I was powerless … that I couldn’t defeat my addictions … proven by the fact that I crawled into AA and literally begged for help. The only Power strong enough to defeat my addiction to drugs and alcohol was God. And that’s when I ran into a serious brick wall. How can I turn to God and ask God for help when He was the heavenly tyrant, the scrupulous bookkeeper, the life-long scapegoat for all my problems? How could I turn to God to help me solve my problems when I saw Him or considered Him to be the source of my problems? I was both mad at Him and terrified of Him all at the same time. But I didn’t know any of this until my sponsor … the person who guided me in my early stages of recovery … asked to draw a picture of God … which I thought was goofy and dumb … but he asked me to do it so many times that I finally sat down and did it just to get him to stop nagging me about it.

I decided to go for broke and write down what I honestly pictured. For some reason, God was tall … really tall … with flowing white hair and a white beard. I guess it’s windy in heaven because His hair was always blowing back, making Him look very intimidating. He points to a big leather chair … it looked like the one Captain Kirk on Star Trek would sit in. A big screen appears and my life begin to play on it. Every time that I screwed up, God would stop the tape and say, “Well … did you see what you did there” and then He would break it down and analyze it. As this continues, I feel more shame and more shame … until I begin pushing the “Go to Hell” button located on the arm of the chair.

I stopped writing and began crying at that point. That wasn’t God. That was me, sitting at the dinner table, getting lectured before I got punished. I had formed an image of God that was the result of my interaction with my parents and teachers and other authorities in my life. I know this may sound weird, but I realized that I had to fire that portrait of God and come up with a new, more accurate picture … one that is always changing and evolving … one that will constantly be changing and evolving for all eternity because God is always changing and evolving.