The Image of God

So why does it matter if you know the features of the face of Jesus? Or if you understand that the spirit of God must be formed? If you've been reading along, maybe by now you wonder what difference it makes.

Simply put, all the difference in the world. And we know this from the outset of Genesis:

Then God made man in His image. In the image of God, He created them.

You are made in the image of God. Then by definition, it can only enhance your life to pay attention to what that God looks like.

Let's go back to the question I posed last Thursday, talking about the face of the Savior. Remember that I said it's not enough to know the facade of the Man; you must look intimately into His features if you can hope to understand His story.  The same is true of you. Can you tell me what you look like?

Not that you have brown hair and dark eyes and that little mole on your right cheek that seems some days darker than others. Not that you have blonde hair and hazel eyes and your grandmother's nose. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you have to look beyond what it is that might distinguish you from the crowd. You have to look beyond the simple facade that would tell me how to know you if I passed you on the street. You have to look deeper into your story and understand how you came to look this way. Just like the Savior, your features betray your secrets. They tell your story. Do you know your story?

Do you have the wrinkles that say you're a man who's been up many nights, torn between faith and worry? Do you have a scar that reminds you of a broken moment? Do you remember that moment? Are your eyes glassed over with the troubles of this place or can you still see eternity behind them? These are the questions we must consider when looking at ourselves.

There is a verse in James that says something about a man who looks at himself in the mirror, then walks away and forgets what he looks like. James wasn't talking about the simple facade; he was talking about the features. He was talking about a man who looks at himself, walks away, and forgets his story. If you forget your story, you're going to have a hard way in this world. That's just the truth of it. But when you remember to look with the same eyes that squint to see the Savior, you rediscover what you're telling with your life.

And let's go back to Friday, too, to the question I posed about the spirit of God. Is it formed or unformed? Does God simply expand to fill all of the empty spaces, or is there a measure of definition to Him that allows you to know what He looks like? Many of us are asking the same question about ourselves: are we simply expanding to fill all of our spaces or is there something defining about our personalities, our lives? Can we be drawn in by the lines of our own words, or lives? Can we be known or must we just trust that we, too, work in mysterious ways?

It sounds silly, right? Imagine for a minute having that conversation with someone. You do something or say something or something happens, and they look at you incredulously and ask, What did you do that for? And you simply look up, ponder for a second, and declare, I work in mysterious ways. Nobody's going to buy that for long. Because the truth is that man is drawn in by his own lines. He is defined by certain characteristics that make him who he is. The more we get to know a man, the more we see clearly his edges. The more his shape comes into view. The question that man then has to ask himself is, what do I look like?

Which brings us back to Genesis - we're supposed to look like God. We are supposed to have features that narrate our story, that remind us of where we've been and point us toward where we're going and betray the very things that have shaped and influenced us. We are supposed to have a formed essence, clearly defined lines that tell us who we are and what we do (and what we don't do). And if those features and that essence is supposed to draw us back to God, supposed to show the presence of God in our lives, then it is of critical importance that we discipline ourselves to pay attention to these very same features and this very same spirit of God.

Otherwise, how does anything look like anything? If you look in the mirror and look like a man, you're selling yourself short and one has to wonder if it is because you do not know yourself....or because you do not know your God.

There are many among us, and most of us at any given time, searching for meaning in this world. Searching for meaning in our very hearts. There's this myth that we come better before God when we know who we are, that we have to figure ourselves out first if we want any hope of relationship with Him. But the opposite of this is true: if we're searching for meaning, if we're trying to figure out what all of this means, then we must know God first. We cannot look at God through the eyes with which we see ourselves; we will only ever see our figment of our God.

We must, rather, look at ourselves through the eyes with which we see God. Then, we shall see both men more clearly - the Son and the prodigal.

Spirit of God

Yesterday, I asked what you see of the Savior. Do you know His face only by its facade, or do you know intimately His features? Today's thought is similar. The idea today is, what do you know of the spirit of God?

This is an important question. One of the struggles of having an "invisible" God is that it can be hard to see what He's doing, and hard to show anyone else exactly where God is. Or even who He is. People - Christians and non-Christians alike - are stuck on this idea of the spirit of God because we think it is so loosely defined, and undefinable. We think it is ungraspable. Unknowable. We even have a phrase for this:

God works in mysterious ways.

Which is spiritual speak for, "I have no idea." It's a buzz phrase for "Because I believe in God, I have to believe that He's behind this somewhere, somehow, but I could never tell you where or how because I just don't know." It's the spirit of God, a mystical vapor, a fleeting fog. 

Or is it? I wish I took better notes. It was either last week or the week before, and I was reading something - the Bible, a book, which book?, I can't remember - when I started to have this thought about the formed vs. the unformed spirit of God. And beyond that, the formed vs. the unformed spirit of God within a man. Because I think for too long, I bought into this idea that the spirit of God was outside of my reach, that I could never explain it nor define it and because I could do neither, I would only have to trust it. Talk about casting your cares on the wind!

(By the way, you can't necessarily catch the spirit of God even in the wind. Ask Elijah.)

But with all I have of my God, with all I know of Him, with all that I've read about Him and seen of Him exposed in the present, I can't believe that God would relegate His people to having only a vague concept of His spirit. A simple wisp of the wind, for lack of a better term. A phantom. God's entire relationship with mankind has been staked on being present with man - in the Garden of Eden, atop Mount Moriah, in the middle of the Red Sea, in a cloud by day and fire by night, in the flesh of Christ Himself. I refuse to believe that God would ask His people to believe in an unformed spirit, a concept with no shape or structure. I refuse to believe He would demand that we simply believe in God, that we simply accept that God works in mysterious ways, that we live our lives believing the idea of God is simply expansive, that it takes up all space and takes on all forms and is whatever it is in the places in which we would have to trust that it's there.

Do you see the problem? I know in my heart what it's like to have this concept of God's unformed spirit. I know in my community what it's like, as I hear it reflected from other people. And yet, I am struggling to define exactly what it is that we can't quite define. I am flubbing over these words, knowing they are inadequate, and yet not able to come up with anything more substantive. That is precisely the language we have for our God as long as we continue to believe in His unformed spirit. We can't quite put our finger on Him, and we can't even make sense as to why. It's a jumbled mess.

If you're looking, I think you'll see that the spirit of God is not just a mist. It's not a phantom or an infinite expansion. God is not simply "everywhere," as we so readily believe. He is not unexplainable or unknowable or undefinable. He's not some blur on the cosmic creation. In fact, the more you're looking for Him, the more He starts to come into focus.

No. Most of us, the vast majority of us, will never see the spirit of God. We will never have Him in a tangible form. But He's taking shape all the same. Slowly, over time, as faith grows in our hearts, God grows in our eyes and we see His spirit in a whole new way.

We see it in wisdom. The more intimately we see the wovenness of the universe, the more we see the spirit of God reflected in wisdom. And it starts to take shape.

It is defined a little more by grace. When we realize that we have received a tender mercy we did not deserve, that shows us who God is. And the spirit of God is hemmed in by grace.

And also by the very mercy, that understanding that we have also not received what we do deserve. God is coming into focus.

There are so many attributes of God, some that He's given us of Himself and some that we have given Him, that come to define what the spirit of God is. The more we recognize these traits in our world, the more we start to see the outline of God. He starts to take shape before our very eyes in strength, grace, wisdom, mercy, forgiveness, presence, passion, promise, love, joy, peace, and on and on and on until it's not so hard any more to see what God looks like. He is drawn in by His own boundaries, by the very nature of who He is.

Internally, this is also true. It may seem like the spirit of God comes in and fills up all of your spaces, takes residence in every molecule of your being. But as you grow, as we grow and mature and come to know Him more, the spirit of God consolidates inside of us and forms not a mystery but a majesty. Not a ghost but a grace. We develop within us this clearly defined, fully formed spirit of God that we can hold onto in our hearts in a way that the vapor never holds. It is the radiance of that God that fills us and permeates every facet of our being. It is not until we have this God inside of us that we begin to understand who He is at all, or who we are, or even what faith is.

It's too easy to just say that God works in mysterious ways. It's a cop out. It's laziness and an unwillingness to dive into the messy and sometimes offensive ways of God, ways that are contradictory to the things our world tells us to look for. God doesn't work in mysterious ways. He tells us exactly how He works; we just don't always have the eyes to see it. But the more we focus on what He's given us to see, the more we see of Him and the more we understand the spirit of God.

It is not the unformed, but the clearly formed, taking shape over time as we dare to see what God has set before our eyes.

The Savior's Face

As Easter approaches, many of us are thinking about this man we call Christ. Jesus of Nazareth, Emmanuel. God with us. And what I'm thinking about, particularly as I consider Stations of the Cross and the incredible burden (joyous, but still burden) of leading people intimately through the passion of our Christ, is His face. I'm thinking about what we see when we look at Jesus eye-to-eye.

It's a kind of intimacy we've somehow lost in our present world. Not just with Jesus, but with just about everybody. I've noticed it as I step further and further into the presence ministry. I've noticed it when I take the time to notice it, when I remember that I am keenly aware how much I'm missing it. It's that willingness, and perhaps even the ability, to look someone else in the eye. To see something deeper than the facade of a man's face.

I could tell you what Jesus looks like - olive-toned skin, deep-set eyes, beard. I could say something similar about many of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis, and most of the strangers I've just met. I can tell you what a face looks like. You probably can, too. You can probably tell me about hair color, face shape, a mole on the left cheek or a birthmark over the right eye. You can tell me what a man looks like, and I might even know what you're talking about.

But until we are willing to consciously engage in another man's face, until we embrace that our eyes can see deeper, we will never know why a man looks the way he does. If we don't know that, we don't know the man.

I have always had a bit of an eidetic memory (think: photographic, although that term is not quite accurate). One of the things that has haunted me about this is that, while I may be looking at a person's face while talking with him, it is not until later when that image comes back to my mind that I realize all I missed. This was true in the hospital. Oh, was it true in the hospital. I would walk in and spend some time with a patient and think things went well, but upon later reflection when that patient's face came back into my mind, I would realize in the lines on his face, in the emptiness in her eyes, that I missed something big. That I never went beyond the surface. It gave me something to work on, and it brought me to a place of deeper ministry. I had to be intentional about looking people in the eye. Not just looking at them.

The same is true for so many of us with Jesus. I think if asked, we could come up with a reasonable description of the facade of His face. Just as I mentioned above. Olive-toned skin, deep-set eyes, beard. But when was the last time you saw anything deeper?

Have you looked in His eyes and seen eternity stretching before Him? Do you know that's what He's looking at? Do you understand that's why His eyes appear to be so deep?

Have you seen the kiss of betrayal on His lips? Have you studied the mark of a one-time friend on the most tender of His flesh?

Have you considered His distinctly-Jewish nose? Have you thought about what His heritage means? Not that He was the Son of God, the Promised Messiah, but that He was a Jew? Can you separate the two and understand the profound meaning of man's religion in the Son of Man's life?

Do you see the blood streaming down His brow? Look deeper even into that. Do you see the place where the crowns are pressing into and through His broken flesh? Do you understand the brokenness of the Man who stands before you? Who has stood in place of you?

It is not the facade of a man's face that matters. It's not that you could pick him out in a crowd, that you could point him out in a photograph. Knowing a man's flesh does not bring you to know the man. It is his features that reveal who he is. It is every little line, every little uniqueness, every little bit of meaning infused in his face that tells his story. It is something deeper that reveals his true heart. 

This is something I'm working on, daily. To not just look at people as we pass, but to really see them. To look deeper into their face to see their features. To see their weariness and their worries, their life and their love. To see the questions they're asking and the answers they already know. To see that place where fear and faith collide and to see more than a stranger; to discover a story. It's something we have to be intentional about. It is something I have to be intentional about, but I'm working on it.

Starting with Jesus.

Holy Fear

There are several words and phrases in the Bible that we don't quite understand, sentences we are still parsing more than 2000 years later. Meanings we're trying to uncover. Messages that we're trying to make fit our paradigm. One of the most confusing is the idea of man's "fear of the Lord." 

Because we all know we're not supposed to be afraid of God, and yet that word....fear...it's hard to quite wrap our heads around. It must mean awe, we say. The awe of the Lord. It must mean appreciation or worship or deference. It must mean that recognition that God is so much bigger than us. Yes...that word translated fear must simply mean respect. Man should live in respect of the Lord. 

They couldn't have meant fear.

...They totally meant fear.

I feel like I do a lot of writing about fear, and maybe I do. (A quick run through my tags, and you can kind of see a pattern here.) It's not that I intend to be so fear-focused; it's that there's such a fine line between fear and faith. And looking around, it's easy to see that the opposite of faith is not doubt; it's fear. Fear is what keeps us from becoming what it is that God created us to be. Fear is what holds us back when God calls us to step forward. And I think I've mentioned this before - there are more commands in the Bible to "not be afraid" than anything else. A popular meme says there are 365 such commands, one for each day of the year. (You're on your own on Leap Day.)

I dare argue, however, that fear may be something holy. Or perhaps that holy feels like fear. I was a psychology undergrad for a few years (which makes me an expert on everything, thank you very much) and one of the cool technologies we have today in the field of psychology is the ability to image the brain in motion. To see it thinking, in blasts of color on a screen. Not that I'm all about figuring things out, but I still think this is particularly neat. We can see, for instance, a brain that processes junk food in the same way it processes crack cocaine. We can see a brain respond to the winter season the same way it does to depression. And I think if we were to put this to a study, I'm fairly confident of this, we would find that the brain processes holy in the same way it processes fear.

(Someone with the fancy machine, please draw this one up!)

There's been a great deal of holy happening in my life lately. A ton of cool moments that can be described as nothing but God. And yet, as these moments started unfolding, what I felt most profoundly was fear, albeit a holy fear. I could go from having this intense sensation of fear to a deep worship and back again in the blink of an eye. I could go from absolute awe at the presence of God to an unexplainable fear in a matter of seconds, then back again to worship because holy had to be the thing. In a one-on-one with one of my supervisors in the chaplain education program, we once started talking about this very thing. She always said that I looked like I was absolutely enjoying myself, and I was. I told her about the stillness in my spirit, the joy in my heart, the smile on my face. I told her what it was like to leave the hospital and suddenly be aware of how powerfully the presence of God had shown up that day. What it meant to get in my car at the end of a shift and hear worship on the radio and understand it on a level I could never put words to. Then I looked her in the eye and added, "But...even after nine years of Post-Traumatic Stress, after almost a decade of terrible flashbacks and horrid nightmares...I don't even know how to say this...I am the most scared today that I have ever been in my life." She didn't know what to make of that; neither did I.

But as time wears on and that seeming conflict of holy and fear continues to rage in my heart, I think I'm starting to figure it out. I think...they're the very same thing. It is the holy that feels like fear.

Think about all of the holy moments in your life. Think about the way the divine presence sort of catches in your heart, makes everything inside you skip a beat. Think about that elongated second that requires a response. Think about those moments, and I think you'll start to see the holy-fear correlation. Because these holy moments initiate the classic fear response: fight or flight.

That's the struggle many people have with faith. They come to a point where God is undeniably holy and perfectly present in their lives, however fleeting that moment may feel, and that fight or flight kicks in. I think we've all had that moment. It's the moment that led Moses to argue with God - no, I can't do it, I'm not Your man - and the moment that led Jonah into the whale. It's the fight, the refusal, the denial...and it's the escape, it's the hiding, it's the run. Very rare is the man who simply says, "Alright, cool. Let's go." A holy moment sparks this fight or flight in us the very same way our deepest fears do.

It might be easy, then, to say that perhaps holiness is one of our deepest fears. Maybe it is. I don't know. We could certainly rationalize that one out and come up with a plausible answer in either direction. I don't know that that's the point. I don't know that it matters whether holiness is our fear or not. What I think is important is that we understand that it simply may be that we process holiness in the same way as fear.

I think God understood that. I think that's why He constantly reminds His people, "Do not be afraid." It's not fear He was fighting against; it was holy He was trying to preserve. I think He comes, knowing that holy feels like fear and inviting His people to just wait a second. To hold onto that moment. To not be pressured into a fight or flight, but to take a moment for what might be faith. You see, that is the third option in response to this feeling. Not to argue. Not to run. But just to believe. 

Most of us forget we have that choice.

We're a people who want to dive into fear, to shine light in the darkness. We think if we can just get down deep enough, we can uncover the "truth" and that will eliminate our fear. The thing about fear is that you can never understand it from the inside. The further you dive into fear, the more wholly lost you become until you're not sure what you're afraid of, or why, but that fear comes to define you. You have to step out of fear, or at least stand up to it, if you ever hope to overcome it.

Faith, however, requires that you dive into it. It beckons you to go deeper. It invites you into the depths of the unknown and all it takes is a moment.

You blink your eyes in fear, and the object of your fear grows larger. Blink your eyes in faith and the world opens up. Have I mentioned that it's a fine line?

And I think this is why we have all of these Bible authors talking about such a thing as the fear of the Lord. It's not that they were being metaphorical. It's not that our translations are slightly off. It's not that we're supposed to make that into some milder word, like respect or awe or even wonder. It's that, to an aching heart, there is just not a better word. Fear is what holy feels like. All these men, the authors of their time, the players in God's story were living in the holy of the Lord and they wanted people to embrace it. They wanted people to understand it was a good way to live.

It is a good way to live. My heart hasn't settled on fear or faith. I'd like to say it's faith but there are moments that the overwhelming feeling of fear catches me. It is still true that today, I am more afraid than I have ever been in my entire life, but my life is also more holy than it has ever been. I am one blink away from opening up this world before me, one split second from seeing what lies beyond. But I am also one blink away from seeing my insecurities magnified, my worst nightmares expanded. It takes a great deal of conscious effort, on any given day, to figure out if what is going on is hair-raising or simply holy. More often than not, it is both.

I'd like to see the studies. I'd be interested to find out if what my heart tells me is true, if the piece of the brain that processes fear is the very same one that holds onto holy. I think it is. And I'm glad there are men of God who have come before me who knew this, though they probably struggled themselves over the words, and shared with us the glory of living in the fear of the Lord (which may be nothing more than the holy). But I am most glad for a God who, having woven this all together, takes every chance to remind a man not to be afraid.

That it doesn't have to be a fear response. It doesn't come down to fight or flight. There is another option. That option is faith.

Torn

Okay, so as I sit here, I have written two nearly-full, absolutely terrible blog posts for this morning. I have written about the servanthood of Jesus and what He really meant when He said the Son of Man has come to serve. I have written about what it means to do your own thing versus joining someone else in their own thing, and what that means for leadership and community. And I have deleted them both. Even from draft form. They are just gone. The jumbled, messed-up way those words poured out of me declared they are not the story for today. And yet, I have to admit that I'm not sure what today's story is.

The truth is that I'm thinking about these things. I've been thinking about these things quite a bit, and they're probably connected. I'm thinking about what it means to be a part of something bigger than yourself, to be at the mercy of a greater hand. I'm thinking about the way it feels to just go out and join someone. It answers so many questions we have about ourselves. 

That's opposite of what the world tells us. They say if you want to know who you are, you have to do what feels right to you. You have to follow your heart. You have to be your own man. You have to do your own thing. They say that that's enough. I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm not sure at all.

Because it seems to me that I only know myself when I'm into something bigger than me. A man who pursues his own heart finds himself nothing more than lonely at the end of the day. Maybe he's doing his thing, but it doesn't take long before he realizes he's doing it alone. And no one can stand on his own for very long. It either breeds resentment that no one is coming along or self-doubt that the man is anything worthwhile at all. A man out doing his own thing either turns on his world...or he turns on himself.

Been there.

And yet, as I write these words, I think about my own insecurities. They run deep, and if you know me at all, then you know that's the truth. I think about the way my heart catches whenever I think about stepping into something bigger than me. I think about the doubt that arises when I try to find a place at the table. There is a part of me that could see my name written on the place card and still decide there's no space for me. No real space. That I have nothing to contribute to a meal so grand. There's a part of me that, just as I step up, continues to step back and is never quite sure what to make of it all.

I don't know when this happened. I used to be so beautifully arrogant, so wonderfully full of myself. I used to think there was a way in this world and I just had to bushwhack my way through it. I used to think I just had to make my place. But the more time went on, the more I realized that I never found a spot that felt quite right.

Now, I'm entering a season where I think I know my way. At least, I'm starting to. I'm stepping into something bigger than me and there's that constant pull to step back. Part of me sees the way forward and knows what's coming; part of me can't believe there's a place at this table for me. Part of me sees my name etched on the path; part of me thinks they must mean someone else.

Several times over the past few weeks, I have seen my life stretch out before me. I have seen the invitation. I have reached for the outstretched hand. I have considered what it all looks like. I have seen new things growing. Old things being repaired. Broken pieces coming back together. I'm excited. There's a certain measure of finding your way that's satisfying...and a whole heap of it's that scary. Who knows what to make of such a thing?

I think about my insecurities as life moves forward and, for the first time, I find myself stepping with it. Not being dragged along. Not kicking and screaming. Deliberately stepping forward into a life that is calling me. I think about how the fear doesn't let go, but I don't let it stop me. I think about what it means to carry that fear forward, to let it be a part of this moment but not a defining part. I think about what it means to choose faith.

I think about what it means for the first time in my life to rid myself of mock arrogance, to be quietly unsure of myself. And to be okay with that. My own uncertainties somehow make me surer of the bigger thing. I think about what it means to be in this place where I know what's coming but don't know how. I trust in tomorrow but don't know when. 

And I think about, in a world that tells me to do my own thing and a heart that thirsts for something bigger, there is this beautiful place for both. That I come into my next adventure fully as I am - unsure, unsteady, nervous, excited, confident, questioning, and a whole mix of other things - that I bring into new territory all that I am, that I am about to do a new thing in my own way but that it will still be a thing that is bigger than me. Because it was here before I got here, will go on without me, and I am but graced to join it for a short time. I get to do a bigger thing all the while doing me. And I don't know what to make of that.

All I know for sure is that it's decidedly blessed. Deeply holy. And profoundly graced. 

It's a good season to be in. Even if I don't know what today's story is. Maybe...it is simply this.