back to the center
Start hereLessonsListenBooksAbout
Volume 1 · Honest HereticsLesson 2About 22 minutes

The Clearest Picture of God

When you picture God, whose face do you see?

Honest Heretics edition for skepticsSwitch to Centered (for believers)

Lesson 2 · Honest Heretics
Listen to this lesson
0:00
Read the lessonDownload Volume 1 (PDF)
The center · John 14:9
9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

In this lesson

Everyone carries a picture of God. For some it is a stern judge keeping score. For some it is a distant power, or a kindly grandfather, or a voice that sounds a lot like a parent. Most of us never chose our picture. We absorbed it from sermons, paintings, movies and the people who raised us.

Ask many Christians what God is like and you will hear about anger: a God who keeps score and is ready to punish. Many people carry that fear long after they stop believing. Here is the problem: Christians themselves say the clearest picture of God is Jesus, and Jesus looks nothing like that. If you've tried telling someone you love that, you know how lonely it can feel.

Read it3 min

On his last night with his disciples, Jesus told them he was going to the Father. One of them, Philip, asked for what every religious person has wanted.

Who's who: Philip was one of the twelve disciples, Jesus' inner circle of followers. "The Father" was Jesus' usual name for God. Hebrews and Colossians, quoted below, are two of the early Christian letters that follow the Gospels in the New Testament.
John 14:8-10
8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I tell you, I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works.

The opening of John's Gospel says the same thing in other words. No one has ever seen God; the Son has made him known.

John 1:18
18No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.

The letter to the Hebrews and the letter to the Colossians use two striking images: Jesus is the "radiance" of God's glory, and the "image of the invisible God."

Hebrews 1:3
3His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had by himself purified us of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Colossians 1:15
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

The world behind the words4 min

Philip's request made sense. His Scriptures taught that no one could see God and live. When Moses asked to see God's glory, he was told, "You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live" . People knew God through the Law, through the prophets and through mighty acts in their history, but always at a distance.

So Jesus' answer was astonishing. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Philip had already been looking at God for three years: at the meals, on the roads, at the bedsides of the sick. He just hadn't recognized what he was seeing.

That changes how to read everything Jesus did. When he was "moved with compassion" for crowds who were "harassed and scattered, like sheep without a shepherd" , that was God's compassion. When he grew indignant at disciples who shooed children away , that was God's indignation. When he wept over Jerusalem , those were God's tears.

One scene shows the point sharply. A Samaritan village refused to welcome Jesus, and two of his disciples wanted to call down fire on it. They had a precedent: the prophet Elijah had once called down fire on soldiers sent to arrest him . Jesus turned and rebuked them.

Luke 9:54-56
54When his disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from the sky and destroy them, just as Elijah did?” 55But he turned and rebuked them, “You don’t know of what kind of spirit you are. 56For the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” They went to another village.
Who's who: Samaritans were a neighboring people whom many Jews regarded as religious outsiders and rivals. Elijah, the prophet from Lesson 1, had once called fire down on enemies; the disciples wanted to do the same.

The disciples reached for a picture of God from an older story. Jesus corrected it with his own.

Point to this: Jesus described himself in a few words: "I am gentle and humble in heart" . When a Christian describes an angry God, you can point to the one person their own faith says shows God most clearly.

How it drifted5 min

Ring 3: church tradition
A picture of God drawn from somewhere other than Jesus
The further an idea sits from the center, the more it needs a reason to outrank his words.

If Christians agree that Jesus shows us what God is like, how did so many end up picturing God so differently from him? The history shows two drifts, in opposite directions, and the church itself named the first one a mistake.

Around the year 140, a wealthy ship owner named Marcion taught in Rome that the God of the Old Testament was a different, harsher god from the Father Jesus revealed. He threw out the Jewish Scriptures and kept only an edited Luke and ten of Paul's letters. The church in Rome rejected him around 144. Christians insisted that the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus are one and the same God. This book agrees with them: Jesus does not replace the God of the Old Testament. He shows us that God most clearly.

The second drift went the other way and lasted much longer. Over the centuries, Christian art and preaching often pictured God, and even Jesus, mainly as a terrifying judge. Medieval churches carved scenes of the Last Judgment over their doors. Michelangelo's great fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, finished in 1541, shows Christ with his arm raised to cast the damned down. In colonial New England in 1741, the preacher Jonathan Edwards delivered the most famous sermon in American history.

“
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.
Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Enfield, Connecticut, 1741

Generations of children learned to picture God that way. It is worth setting that picture beside the one Jesus gave of a father who sees his runaway son "still far off," and runs.

Luke 15:20
20“He arose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and ran, fell on his neck, and kissed him.
c. 30Jesus: "He who has seen me has seen the Father."
c. 90–110John's Gospel: the Son "has declared him."
c. 144The church in Rome rejects Marcion, who split the God of the Old Testament from the Father of Jesus.
1100s–1200sCarved Last Judgment scenes over the doors of great churches.
1541Michelangelo finishes the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.
1741Jonathan Edwards preaches "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
Whose purpose it serves: A frightening God is useful to anyone who wants control. Fear fills pews, keeps questions quiet, keeps children in line and opens wallets. Revival preaching built whole careers on it. Many who used fear sincerely believed it would save souls, but Jesus never led with it, and the picture they preached is not the one he gave.

What they'll say back3 min

"God is also a judge. Jesus himself warned about judgment." He did, and often. This lesson does not say God never judges. It says that the judge is the same one who wept over the city that would reject him, who refused to call down fire, and who prayed for the people killing him. If Jesus is the clearest picture of God, then God's judgment looks like his: honest about evil and full of mercy at the same time.

"Isn't this just Marcion again, picking a nice God over a harsh one?" No, and the difference matters. Marcion said there were two gods and threw out half the Bible. Christians have always said there is one God, and that Jesus is the clearest window onto him. When an older picture of God seems to clash with Jesus, the Christian answer has been to read the older picture through him, the way Jesus read it himself on the road to the Samaritan village.

Be fair: Jonathan Edwards also wrote at length about the beauty and love of God, and one sermon is not the whole man. Notice which of his words people remembered.
When you hear these: Expect "God is also a judge." Agree, then ask what kind of judge Jesus was: the one who refused the fire and prayed for his executioners. You don't need to argue about the Old Testament. Keep the conversation on the face Christians themselves say shows God.

Measured against the center2 min

A contradiction
Picturing God mainly as an angry judge contradicts the picture Jesus gave of himself and of his Father.

Measured against the center, the angry-judge God does not hold. Jesus said that whoever has seen him has seen the Father. He refused to call down fire, wept over the city that rejected him, and described a father who runs to a son who wasted everything. A God who holds people over the fire like a loathsome insect is drawn from somewhere else.

This is one of the most damaging failures in the religion. Generations of people were taught to fear a God who looks nothing like the man Christians call his clearest picture, and many still carry that fear. If you were one of them, you were not imagining the harm, and the fault was not yours. The God you were warned about is not the one Jesus described.

A keeper1 min

Be merciful. Jesus put the whole idea in one sentence, and it works whether or not you believe in the Father he mentions.

Luke 6:36
36“Therefore be merciful, even as your Father is also merciful.

In practice it looks like the scene in the Samaritan village: when people reject you, don't reach for the fire. Treat the people who disappoint you the way you would want to be treated on your worst day.

You don't need a theology to practice this. Mercy toward people who reject you is one of the hardest and best things a person can learn, and it is the opposite of what fear-based religion teaches.

Reflect2 min

  1. What picture of God were you given growing up, and who gave it to you?
  2. Has someone used God's anger to control or shame you, or someone close to you?
  3. If God looked like the Jesus in this lesson, what about the religion you've seen would have to change?

Take your time with each one. There is space to write your answers in the book and the PDF.

Practice this week1 min

This week, notice how God is described around you: on church signs, in sermons on the radio, online, in family conversations. Is it the God who calls down fire, or the father who runs? Write down one example of each.

Bring it back1 min

1
Common ground
"We both believe Jesus shows us what God is like, right? He said, 'He who has seen me has seen the Father.'"
2
The bridge question
"When you picture God, does he look more like Jesus at the dinner table, or like something else?"
3
Back to his words
Show them Luke 9:54-56, where Jesus refuses to call down fire on a village that turned him away. Ask: "If that's what God is like, how should that change the way we talk about God to people who reject him?"
They sayYou can say
"God is angry at sin, and people need to hear that."
"Jesus took sin seriously too. But when his disciples wanted fire from heaven, he rebuked them (Luke 9:55). Which picture should come first?"
"The Old Testament shows God destroying his enemies."
"Christians read those stories through Jesus. He said seeing him is seeing the Father (John 14:9)."
Pass it on: If someone you love lives in fear of an angry God, don't argue them out of it. Point them to one scene: the father in Luke 15 who sees his son far off, and runs.

Remember it

A window to the center

"Seen me, seen the Father." John 14:9. On his last night, Philip asked to be shown God, and Jesus told him he already had been.

A window to the center: a square cut through dark paper, and through it the center plainly seen. Seen me, seen the Father.

  1. What did Philip ask, and how did Jesus answer?
    "Show us the Father." "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:8-9).
  2. What did Jesus do when his disciples wanted to call down fire on a village?
    He rebuked them (Luke 9:55).
  3. Why did the early church reject Marcion?
    He taught that the God of the Old Testament was a different god from the Father of Jesus.
Sources
  1. Marcion's teaching and his break with the church in Rome (c. 144): Tertullian, Against Marcion; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27. See also Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities (2003), ch. 6.
  2. Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel, painted 1536–1541.
  3. Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," preached at Enfield, Connecticut, July 8, 1741.
Share this lessonEmailFacebookX
Your progress is saved on this device.