Showing posts with label icon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label icon. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

God's Outstretched Arm (continued)

Grace:
The outstretched arm of God is a powerful image in Christianity, too. Witness Michelangelo’s beautiful “Creation of Adam” painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!  Unlike our Jewish and Muslim cousins, Christians are comfortable imaging/imagining God, yet without worshiping the image itself or losing sight of the reality that God cannot ever be imaged/imagined in all God’s fullness and glory.  We believe that God has created every human being in God’s image, and that, in the person of Jesus Christ, we can see that divine image fully revealed. For this reason, we seek to conform our lives to the life of Christ—not just to the prophetic teaching of Jesus, but to the very being of Christ—by loving wholly, unconditionally and limitlessly.  The term “Son of God” is not understood by Christians as a reference to Joseph’s or Mary’s son; like other monotheists we believe that God is One and undivided. “Son of God” is simply a way for our finite brains to conceive an eternal relationship through which God gave and gives to us God’s very self to be with us in our joys and in our suffering, and to offer us the redemptive Grace of an ever-deepening awareness and experience of God. That is why the historical Jesus, a Jewish man situated in time and place, can be understood as the eternal Christ—of one being with God—who can be seen and embodied in every person. Depictions of Jesus Christ, the Icon of God, can thus be windows for us through which God’s presence, and God’s forever outstretched arm, may be revealed.

This is a response to Tziporah's post of March 20th. Please share your thoughts about using anthropomorphic terms to talk about God in the comments section.