How do you hone your picture of God?

6 min. to read if you read all the footnotes, too.

In my upcoming book, Love’s Wide Embrace, I made this claim about the way we must improve and refine our understanding of God:

“As we contemplate Jesus’ whole story — incarnation, life, teaching, death, and resurrection — our picture of God is honed. Think of the way an artist measures their drawing by referring to the model reclining in front of them. They sketch and refine, adding new strokes here, carefully erasing errant lines there. Over time, layer by layer, their drawing becomes more accurate and more beautiful. In our case, Christ, the model himself, is whispering to you, guiding you through this faithful process of revision.

Pauline, one of my early readers, reacted to this. She said, “I have trouble seeing how I refine my picture of God by reflecting on Jesus. How I perceive Jesus as I read the Gospels seems to depend a good deal on the picture of God I already have.”

Well, Pauline is absolutely right.

If you share Pauline’s question, here are a few thoughts.

First, some of us tend to relate to Jesus more as a theological idea than as a person. I don’t think this is a bad place to start. Some of us don’t seem wired up for touchy-feely experiences of the Divine. I’m more in this camp, myself. And from experience, I know that when we’re in conversation with more charismatic or mystical-leaning folks, we can feel a certain kind of way. Maybe embarrassed that we don’t seem to have the same kinds of experiences they have? Sometimes we might even feel a little superior, as if our ideas are more mature than their feelings.

Relating to Jesus as an idea, at least at first, is nothing to be ashamed about. None of us lives in first-century Judea. So, if we’re going to have any kind of experience of Jesus at all, it will begin as stories and ideas. Knowing this, the best thing we can do is ensure that the theological ideas we associate with Jesus align with the Gospel. This covers a lot of ground. Now, I think it is possible to have a more relational experience of Jesus, but ensuring that the theological aspect is not doing us or others harm is a good place to start.

Second, there are numerous perspectives on Jesus. Christians have been remaking and re-imagining him since the resurrection. While certain folks might blanch a bit hearing me say this, I suggest to you that this is also not a problem; it’s how memory and storytelling work. The Gospels and other early Christian writings provide us with a starting point, but they leave us with much work to do. They do not recount every action and word of Jesus. They do not give us Jesus’ own reflections on our interpretations of him.

The human tendency will always be to tell the story of Jesus in ways that justify our hopes, fears, prejudices, and expectations. History proves this. Forget history; Look around you right now! At this moment in my country, several competing narratives about Jesus profoundly disagree with each other! Our ongoing work is to notice this, name it, and return to the sources we have and the guidance of the Spirit to refine the way we think of God in Christ.

Third, as we do this, we must ensure that the references we consult in our effort to hone our mental image of Jesus are solid, trustworthy, and varied. I am not suggesting that any narrative about Jesus is equally valid. Hard no! But I am acknowledging that, as limited humans, our views will also always be incomplete. Everything we think we know was mediated through filters. We can’t avoid this. That means we need to be intentional in understanding our filters and broadening them.

The gospel texts are our primary source, but the community shapes the way we read those texts, which we are part of, and the other interpreters we read. This has always been true. We can see this very debate in the writing of the earliest Christian theologians, and we can trace the implications of these debates in history.

If the interpretive voices we follow tend toward self-centered, self-justifying, triumphalist ways of being the church, expect that to shape the way you see Jesus. Your tradition will likely suggest that their narrative is the only true version. You should be suspicious of those kinds of claims — especially when the narrative you’ve been given is demonstrably harmful.

Choosing voices that focus on the kinds of things Jesus focused on in the Gospels will shape your vision differently. Not sure what I mean? Read Luke 4:16–21. Then, ask yourself if the picture of Jesus you hold, or that your church preaches, aligns with Jesus’ own mission statement. Or try the same exercise with 1st Corinthians 13. If God is love, as 1st John 4:8 declares, then 1st Corinthians 13 must also describe the character of God. So, again, does this passage align with your picture of Jesus? Does it express who you think God is? Does the narrative your pastor, or church, or the committee-inside-your-head hold align with this or not?

Jesus told us, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” This is the master key to the project of honing our understanding of God. Your spiritual intuition is the vehicle the Holy Spirit uses to raise red flags for you. Church history makes this one thing abundantly clear: No single interpreter of Scripture has a lock on God. No denomination or theological tradition has it right. So read and listen widely. As you do, ask the Spirit to help you see Jesus more clearly — and even (I know this might sound weird) to help you experience him.