Chapter 2 – Un-Christlike Images of God
We have a habit of forming God in our own image. What we absorb from our parents, our education, our culture, our church (if any) all goes into the mix.
Who is to say that the ‘God’ of North American Baptists is, or is not, the same ‘God’ of the local religion in, say, Afghanistan or India?
What is God?
…‘Your idea of God may be no more than an exaggerated version of yourself.’
Chapter 1 – What is God really like?
Human thoughts and language about God must always be deeply inadequate, writes Brad Jersak.
Any pronouns we use for God – ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’ – are inadequate.
Even saying that God is a ‘being’ may be unsatisfactory: God should, rather, be thought of the ‘ground of being’.
It may be that the very exercise of theology is an attempt to put God in a box, to turn God into a specimen to be examined under the microscope, to reduce him to our own puny proportions.…
I begin a summary and review of this book.
Full title:
A More Christlike God
A More Beautiful Gospel
By Bradley Jersak
Published in 2015 by Plain Truth Ministries
Preface
The author’s stated purpose is
‘to introduce in simple terms a more Christlike image of God.’
This is developed in two ways. Negatively, Brad Jersak seeks to sweep away the many sub-biblical and sub-Christian notions of God that ‘we’ have been taught. Positively, he seeks to replace these false notions with a doctrine of God who is revealed exclusively in and through Christ.…
The problems associated with applying personal pronouns to God are well-known. Is God a ‘he’, a ‘she’ or an ‘it’?
In A More Christlike God, A More Beautiful Gospel, Brad Jersak writes:
…‘Even using the simple pronoun ‘he’ for God is awkward and inaccurate…God is not a ‘him’ or a ‘her.’ Jesus said “God is Spirit” (John 4:24). But God is far more personal than an ‘it.’ Thus, we lean to the language of ‘him’ historically because when God showed up in the flesh, ‘he’ came as a man, Jesus (his ‘son’).
Psa 137:7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
They said, “Tear it down, tear it down,
right to its very foundation!”
137:8 O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated!
How blessed will be the one who repays you
for what you dished out to us!
137:9 How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies
and smashes them on a rock!
These sentiments seem far removed from the ethics of Christ’s kingdom. …
Andrew Wilson discusses Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God by Matthew Lynch:
“Joshua portrays the conquest as a continuation of Israel’s liberation from Egypt’s power,” writes Matthew Lynch in his very helpful new book, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. “Moreover, the focus of Israel’s destructive energies was directed against the four symbols of imperial power present in Canaan.”
Warlords: Joshua consistently emphasises the defeat of the Egyptian-backed warlord kings, as the summary report in Joshua 12 makes abundantly clear.
1 Tim 6:9 Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains.
6:11 But you, as a person dedicated to God [lit. ‘O man of God’], keep away from all that.…
All four Gospels record that, during the trial of Jesus, he was mockingly dressed in a robe:
Mt 27:27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s residence and gathered the whole cohort around him. 27:28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe (χλαμύδα κοκκίνην) around him, 27:29 and after braiding a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand, and kneeling down before him, they mocked him: “Hail, king of the Jews!”…
Sara Parks makes some interesting observations about ways in which *Jesus often used both male and female examples in his teaching.
Jesus often taught the same lesson twice, using male- and female-oriented examples:
In some of these pairs, no people are mentioned at all. …
Stephen L. Cook notes that the word ‘teraphim’ occurs 15 times in the Hebrew scriptures.
The usual translation – ‘household gods’ – is, he suggests, somewhat misleading.
Cook thinks that they were effigies of deceased ancestors that were believed to live on in a different form, watching over a person’s household, Exod 21:6; 1 Sam 28:13; Isa 8:19.
In Gen 31:30 Laban searches for his stolen teraphim, calling them his elohim (a term that can apply to supernatural beings other than major deities, cf.…
