Faceless God
We can only become what we can imagine. I learned this lesson as a young kid when I realized why my parents wouldn’t let me watch Rugrats or R-rated movies. While Rugrats is obviously a much different entertainment experience than a R-rated movie, they both were alarming to my parents as each offered a visual representation of the type of person I was not to be. Their fear was centered around the assumption that if I consumed models of behavior that contradicted what they were teaching me at home, then I would end up imitating the very people they didn’t want me to become. In other words, they believed that we all become what we behold.
Whether it worked or not, you will have to ask them, but I do find much wisdom in the sentiment that representation matters. What we find represented to us in the world, ultimately, provides the fuel that powers our imaginations. Consequently, a deprived imagination limits our behavior and worldview by reinforcing the world as it is. On the other hand, a vibrant imagination opens our minds and hearts to the possibility that we and the world can be different, creating the energy to resist the status quo.
For Christians whose vocation is to become “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” what, more specifically who, we can imagine matters a great deal (1 Peter 2:9). Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:19 that “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another…” Paul doesn’t describe the immediate transformation of a bad person into a good person after repeating a “sinner’s prayer.” Rather, Paul is describing the continuous action of seeing Jesus, the “glory of the Lord,” and through our continuous gaze upon Christ, we gradually become like him as we imagine his life taking form and shape in our own.
As the body of Christ, perhaps it should concern us when our lives are not resembling the life of Jesus. In light of the rapid exodus of Americans leaving the church, it’s not much of a stretch to say that the American church is in crisis. However, this crisis is not the result of American Christians loving God with less passion and zeal. No, this crisis is the result of American Christians’ inability to imagine who God is in the person of Jesus. This is an important distinction to make because we often mistake our cultural and political allegiance with love of God, which is idolatry.
Our southern heritage of religious idolatry is vividly described in the book Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I think his observations are worth quoting at length. He notes, “A son of the South, I inherited a white identity that knew how to worship Jesus on Easter Sunday morning and stamp out ‘Negro rule’ in the afternoon. Our dead are buried among monuments that praise the ‘Christian virtue’ of slaveholders. We sing ‘Amazing Grace’ – that anthem written by a repentant former slave-ship captain – in spaces where grace has been hijacked by a way of life rooted in every one of the seven deadly sins … [American Christianity] split denominations to support the Confederacy, blessed a violent Redemption movement, defended Jim Crow, fretted that civil rights preachers had forsaken their ‘spiritual’ calling, and cooperated in the criminalization of people of color, all the while exporting our religion with zeal.”
How does this happen in the “Bible Belt” of all places? I suspect it all happened because we’ve fallen in worship to a God who is not Jesus. When we don’t take seriously the claim that God has revealed God’s self in Jesus Christ, we free ourselves to create God in our own image. Without the person of Jesus informing our imaginations as to who God is and what God does, we naturally take our notions, experiences, and definitions of the Good and Perfect and project them onto our new God. Herein lies the main problem. Our construction of God, who represents the fullness of all that is good, is a direct response to what we have already defined as evil. We have created our own divine ally that will abolish our enemies and eradicate all evil, both of which we have defined in our own terms.
This imagined God is dangerous because it means that we have given unquestionable authority to our own self-righteous crusades. For instance, white Christians sixty plus years ago defined evil as the integration of black and white bodies in public spaces, and therefore, they imagined that God ordained segregation as the “natural” order of things. Today, white Christians define evil as those groups and ideologies that threaten the social, political, and economic hegemony of public morality they’ve enjoyed since the days of Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Buchanan. Therefore, they imagine that God isn’t much different than a multibillionaire real-estate tycoon that is willing to bring wrath upon anyone who questions his supreme authority or power. Tragically, both cases reveal that white Christians aren’t all that interested in the spirit of Christ Jesus “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Instead, we’ve become infatuated with a vague, faceless God who blesses the USA and all its domestic and international dominance of inferior groups.
But this God is not Jesus. The God of empire is, and will always be, Nebuchadnezzar. All my life, I’ve heard the story of the three Hebrew boys who found deliverance from the fiery furnace. However, I’ve heard very little about the three Hebrew boys who refused to bow in allegiance to their nation and leader’s greed, exploitation, and militarism, the very reason they were subjected to Nebuchadnezzar’s capital punishment. The crisis of American Christianity is that we’ve been wooed by Nebuchadnezzar and his promises to “restore [us] to power.” In the words of Brian Zahnd, “When the church lacks the vision and courage to actually be the church, it abandons its high calling of proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus and panders to power, soliciting its services as the high priest of religious patriotism.” Simply, we’ve lost our ability to imagine that God’s power just might be revealed in a powerless babe crying from a lowly manger.
Putting God’s name on our idols, whether we name them Baal or not, is offensive to the God who is revealed in the life of Jesus. We cannot imitate a God we cannot imagine, which seems to be the reason that God became flesh to love enemies, live with the poor, oppose injustice, create community, and multiply love. To confess that “Jesus is Lord” is to submit to the humble, self-emptying, loving, and just ways of Jesus, regardless of whether or not America is great. We no longer get to imagine who God is, for God is Jesus – Love incarnate. Any expression of faith that is anything less than unconditional love for our neighbors forfeits the right to claim companionship with Christ, even if it is dressed up in red, white, and blue.