God The Beautiful One
He stared down at me, his eyes wide and fixed. His thin lips were pressed tightly together, no hint of a smile. The face was white, with not a blush of colour anywhere – was this the white of purity, or the chalky mask of death? I peered through the flickering candlelight and tried to look deeper into those eyes. Was it my imagination, or did I just glimpse a softening, the slightest narrowing of those fixed eyelids, into something other than a glare? Did those pursed lips just curl ever so slightly upwards? Perhaps not. His eyes were hollow, and his nose was long, and he stared down it like a judge about to pass sentence. Yet those eyes bored through me: he surely knew the worst: all my secrets. The blood on his brow was congealed, muddy brown rather than bright crimson: old blood, a dribble from a wound inflicted long ago, in another world, by other people. He held his arms out to me: and for a moment, I felt a glimmer of hope. Was he beckoning me, inviting me to come closer into the warmth of an embrace? Or was he like a policeman signalling traffic to halt – holding his hands out to warn me to keep my distance? Back off, sinner boy, don’t cross the threshold. I watched him, conscious that others had sat right where I sat now for over a thousand years, and they had watched him too. Had they, like me, dared him to move? Had he ever smiled at them? What could stir him? I decided to try a little provocation, bringing to my mind a swear word, and repeating it in my head, challenging him to react, as surely he would be able to read my profane thoughts. Still, like a big bland holy puppet, he stared down at me. Nothing.
I shivered, not from the cold, and stood and grabbed my coat. Then I paused to cross myself quickly – more superstition than devotion. Eager to get out of there now, my hurried steps echoed down the nave. I fumbled for the big, iron door handle, and walked out into the welcome afternoon sun, leaving Jesus behind – or rather, the stained glass image of him that dominated the altar area. I left him marooned in the twilight that ruled in that musty old place. I didn’t want anything to do with him. He looked too much like a glowing prefect, a pompous moralist who could never be satisfied, no matter how good I might become. I ran more than walked to the gate, bolting it firmly behind me, I was glad to leave him back there in that half light, alone, and staring still.
It would be another five years before I bumped into him again, and this time, it was quite an unexpected meeting. It wasn’t even a church building where I found him – but in a classroom of a newly built comprehensive school. The smell of fresh paint lingered in the air, a constant reminder that we were the privileged pupils who got to be the first to use this beautiful, untried building.
The class was about religion – GCE Religious Education in fact: but it was not in the curriculum that I noticed him, but in the eyes – and the life – of the teacher. Mrs Richardson was a rushing, mildly panicked woman. A committed Christian, and a minister’s wife, it seemed that she was always being put upon by other staff members because she seemed so very willing to serve. She dashed from classroom to another classroom, delivering lessons, solving head-of-year hassles, and then finding time to lead the weekly Christian Union meeting before rushing home to become a pastor’s wife once again. And when she talked about Jesus, it was captivating: for her, the blood on his forehead was still bright crimson, his sufferings still mattered, his resurrection real. He was her friend. I wanted to meet him, and so wandered along to the Christian Union, under the pretence that I had come to disrupt it and steal the biscuits. Within weeks, I became a follower of Christ.
And I did so, because I had been treated to a glimpse of the real God – and his kindness and grace – through the working model that was the life of that woman. Her life, though surely imperfect, had been changed by his grace rhythm; I wanted to get in step too. Sadly, too many people have never had such a privileged opportunity as I. They have decided to reject what they see as a very odd and irrelevant person called God: but really they have rejected a hideous facsimile of him. That’s not to say that the real Jesus has not been rejected many times: it’s impossible to really live without him, and sometimes it’s terribly difficult to live with him. But the godlet that I had turned my back on was not whom I later found: I rejected an imitation of the real thing: a mutation; a freak.
Many others have done the same: they have turned their back, not on the real God, but on the God they perceive him to be.
God has been ruthlessly deformed, his appearance twisted into something grotesque by a million caricatures created by humanity, false images created, for example, by the chequered history of the church – and by inference, God, who is found guilty by association.
It may be difficult for us to connect with the atrocities of history, but we must try, lest we repeat yesterday’s mistakes. Look at the blood-letting of the Crusades and then try to think of God, and he appears to be the author of limitless ethnic cleansing, deaf to the cries of thousands for mercy. Imagine the screams of those tormented by thumbscrew and rack during the stain on church history that was the Inquisition, and God looks like a grinning sadist. God’s reputation has suffered at the hands of those who have thought that they ‘owned’ him – and in justifying their cruelty by using his Name as a licence, they acted as though they really thought they did own him. The church always becomes an evil force when it begins to think that it has the franchise on the divine. And the scandals of history are repeated daily in many more subtle ways. Untold damage is done as some Christian leaders, with measured tones and convincing proof texts, paint a credible but false portrait of God. However winsome the preaching, the fact is that it may well create yet another picture that bears little or no resemblance to the truth. Such is the potential that we all have to make the Bible say whatever we want it to say.
After a while, exhausted and disappointed by the weekly freak show, Christians leave the church. And no wonder. The unthinking, legalistic parent who condemns their child’s fashion and music choices, bundling them all into a refuse skip called ‘worldliness’ without thinking through the issue – or explaining it to the child – creates another ugly lesion in the face of God, a warped vision that may well drive them away both from God and church. The predator who sexually abuses his daughter not only robs her of the gifts of innocence and trust, but also destroys the beauty of words like ‘Father’, and makes it almost impossible for her to ever get close to the One who genuinely owns the name ‘Father’ – who will never rape or plunder. In the child’s mind, another scar is etched upon the face of the glorious one.
How easily we make God into a monster or a bore in turn. How many have rejected a grey, dull God, fearing that he might just be the spitting image of the frigid congregation that claims to know him. In a hyper-stern understanding of holiness and transcendence, we have lost sight of the wonderful news that there is a Person at the heart of all things who is the very best, the highest example of nobility and self sacrifice, the epitome of patience, love and kindness – and the most saintly human is but a pale reflection of Him.
Sometimes casual words deface him. While I remain convinced that the Bible teaches heaven and hell as realities, we would do well to think through carefully what those words really mean, lest we misuse them and do great damage. The Dante-inspired medieval vision of Hades, resplendent with fork-toting demons and unquenchable fires may well have caused many to reject God out of hand as a divine commandant of the worst concentration camp that has ever been: and in this vista of a post-life Auschwitz, the crematorium chimneys belch smoke forever.
It is obvious that these caricatures systematically build great obstacles to mission: why would people want to respond to the invitation to turn to the One they view as a vicious, heartless despot?
God has been disguised, his beauty masked. Perhaps that’s why it’s been said that the churches’ main task is to ‘wash the face of Jesus’, to remove the religious grime with which he has been smeared – most often by the church – over the years. The real shining face of Jesus will be, to many, irresistible – if they could only get a glimpse of it.
What has all of this to do with our ability to know and experience grace? I will repeat what I said earlier: grace will not be renewed in us simply as we rehearse or learn cold information about God, but rather as we allow him to renew our experience of him, and alter our vision of him – the beautiful One. Grace is far more than an abstract (or impersonal) theological idea; it flows from the wonderful reality that God is truly the essence of authentic beauty. Grace is not discovered by merely considering what God does, but rather as we encounter who he is: it is rooted in his character, and not just his activities. So, when the Scripture seeks to communicate that God epitomises love, it takes a step forward from simply announcing that he does loving things or acts with love: rather, we are told, ‘God is love’. Everything that he does –and all that he is – is entwined with loving kindness and grace. Grace is no mere force or special commodity; it is not impersonal magic, a sparkly spell or transforming moon dust. Grace is more than a kiss from Prince Charming or the waving of a wand – rather, grace is found in the One who is gracious. All of which makes the outrages of yesteryear, perpetuated in his Name, the more scandalous.
But in ‘washing the face of Jesus’, we must be wary of a more subtle, fashionable masking of the true God – as we apply humanistic make-up, and produce an air-brushed, new-improved God for the delight of the grinning throng. We must not try to revise him because we do not understand him, or worse because we do comprehend but don’t like what he does. To look at him will always require the trust that alone will lead us through the fog-banks of mystery that inevitably surround him as we peer at him from this side of heaven.
We can be guilty of smearing his face with the rouge of sentimentality, applying a softer, more acceptable hue to him. Or we cake the make-up on when we attempt to understand him only in human terms – reducing him to someone that we can fully comprehend or control. The illusion of a manageable deity is dangerous.
Ironically, some have even diminished the truth of grace in their quest to make God more palatable. There are those who insist that all of humanity will ultimately be saved, regardless of their response to the gospel: universalism. They actually turn God into one who will force himself upon us all at the end of things, tossing our ability to choose a way and hauling us all in the captivity of heaven. Such ‘love’ is no love at all, as it strips us of our dignity and turns heaven into something forced upon us, an eternal violation. And not only that: the idea is an unbiblical one! The fact remains that there will be many things about God that will continue to make us uncomfortable: nonetheless we must allow God to be who he is: God.
All that qualified and said, the fact remains that God is beautiful – and not many people know that. Grace is only really experienced as we turn to see that the author of it is indeed ‘the fairest of ten thousand’. Our perception of who God is governs the way that we live, and certainly the way that we live with him: it shapes everything about the way we ‘do’ Christianity. Surely all of us need to pray constantly that we will know God in truth, as he is, rather than unwittingly worshipping an object partly made of our own creation, a tapestry woven by myriad strands of our own upbringing, a few hundred sermons, of our hopes and fears – perhaps the sum total of all of our experience to date. We will never have a pure, utterly biblical view of God this side of eternity – our humanity will ensure that – but we can pray with C.S.Lewis that God will purify and change that vision, as we address our prayers 'Not to who I think you are but to whom you know yourself to be'. Grace is rooted in us knowing the True, Beautiful One – which is one reason in many why it is vital that we know Scripture. When his character is assaulted again, we will have no defence to hand if we are not armed with a solid understanding of the Bible.