Beware Of Caricatures

Leviticus 26:1 Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.

Dr. Tony Evans made a great statement that any image we make of God only distorts Him. There are many distortions.

Close your eyes and imagine what God or the Holy Spirit looks like. Spoiler alert. Whatever came into your mind is wrong and in essence a god of your own making as no one has literally seen the Father or the Holy Spirit.

No one since Jesus walked on the Earth has seen Him like He was then. John saw Him post-Ascension in His glorified body. It was similar enough for John to recognize Him, but a far different form. Stephen saw Him before He died, but he did not describe Him.

Now close your eyes and imagine Jesus. Spoiler alert. Unless He looks like a Mid-Eastern Jew you are not even close. He is not blond with blue eyes nor is His appearance anything other than a Mid-Eastern Jew so all of your pictures, which should not have, are wrong.

I helped an elderly Black man when his truck was out of gas and he was so shocked that I would help him. Before we parted he said, "Now I know what they painted Jesus White." I told him Jesus was a Jew and unfortunately some of us cannot even get that right.

Maybe, you do have one that is Mid-Eastern, it is probably not close to accurate as no one has a painting from when He was here. If there was one, it would have most likely been destroyed when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD.

The Shroud of Turin is an awesome fake, but knowing what the Jews did with Moses' brazen serpent He would not leave something behind to become an idol. None of the Gospel writers or witnesses at the tomb spoke of His image being on the shroud and the shroud was in two pieces, not one.

Karen and I had a caricature done when we were in Memphis some years back. There are enough similarities that those who know us would recognize us, but there are also some exaggerations. If you have seen any political caricatures you know they are usually not flattering. With the advent of computers a person's head can be placed on another person's body usually in an embarrassing way.

When Jesus said that if you have seen Him you have seen the Father, He was not speaking of His earthly form for the Father and the Spirit have no form as we speak of as they are omnipresent spirits. Jesus did not lose any of His attributes including omnipresence by Incarnation.

Rather Jesus was referring to the Father's character, heart and will. Everything He was and did was of the Father though He and the Father were one. One of the many mysteries we will not totally understand until we are in eternity and we may not catch on right away. After all, the Apostles had spent three years with God incarnate and were often clueless. Hopefully, our glorified mind will be a bit quicker.

We might do well to trash all of our caricatures of God as they are probably not as flattering as we intended. After all, we mess up things about Heaven thinking there are female angels, baby angels and we are getting an antebellum mansion so how could we possibly do the Godhead justice?

Instead of dwelling on caricatures, we need to dwell on his character, heart and will so that we will become like Christ who was the image of God in the flesh. We are to become like Him and worship in spirit and truth. That includes the truth that Christ was a Jew and we cannot do Him justice in any form of art. Indeed, we need to let Him paint us as what we are in Him not paint Him to look like us. Maranatha!