MIRROR, MIRROR - Reflections on Leviticus 19

I believe a lot in ineffable. That God is beyond words. That you can hardly say anything about God at all without running the risk of being out of the ball-park wrong – and that even when you’re right, God still isn’t all that excited about being explained. Whenever I have a temptation to say God is____, I get the fear. No eye has seen, no ear has heard – Do not say what I will or will not do. You do not know Who I am or what I am capable of.

I sometimes hear people worry about idolatry, and they try to toss out things that they think they maybe worship, like television or food or Facebook. Like other gods is simply a metaphor for anything that takes too much of our attention, or gives us too much flesh pleasure, or that we turn habitually to rather than prayer or Bible reading or worship. Like the Holy One might actually become jealous of a sandwich. When I hear people conjuring this way, I start imagining God in front of an enormous, bedazzled mirror, gazing at the Divine Image, insecure. There is something fairer than Thou, Fairest Lord Jesus.

I try hard to picture the God above all other gods feeling wounded, or lonely, or mad, or just tapping the foot waiting for me to stop doing whatever it is I’m doing that isn’t productive or disciplined or healthy, or isn’t giving the Lord of lords my undivided attention. But when I do this, God starts to sound less to me like my immortal beloved, the lover of my soul, and a lot more like an abusive boyfriend. I try to imagine God mouthing the words, I can’t believe you chose a sandwich over Me. What is it with you emotional eaters, anyway?  You’re never satisfied.  Sometimes I get guilt and I do say, Ok, God, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t paying enough attention to You. I need You. Really. Look at me, I’m putting all that away. Taste and see that the Lord is good – I get it. Now, what was it You wanted to say?

But I happen to think that idolatry is really more insidious than all of that. I actually think idolatry is very serious. It has to be, because I don’t at all believe God is petty or insecure and because it’s on a shortlist of things that Yahweh God is said to get very, very upset about.

It isn’t just graven images of other gods Yahweh doesn’t like – He doesn’t want carved out statues of Himself either. Not of anything in the heavens, or of anything under the heavens, or of anything in the oceans under the earth. Pretty much no images. I don’t believe it’s that God hates art, and think it is deeper than just that God doesn’t want to be defined. I don’t think God enjoys us holding up little pictures of Unknowable to each other and saying, This is who He is – No, this is who She is. I suspect God isn’t crazy for boxes. But I really don’t imagine that Holy God has more vanity than Snow White’s stepmother, that God is in any way offended by our small imaginings of the Divine, or that God cannot empathize with our deep, deep longing to grasp for that which we are simply not skilled to understand. We’ve been doing it since the beginning – God knows what to anticipate.

I think part of the thing so offensive about idolatry is that it feeds our temptation to want to make God not be other. It fuels our temptation to possess and control the Divine relationship we deeply love. It separates God into compartments based on function, as they relate to our own favourite needs. It puts God into a role. It filters out all the things that we don’t like or need or believe, and leaves us with a smaller, more manageable being that shares our values, who’s actions we can predict, who’s tone we understand. A God who responds to and reflects back to us all the qualities we like best about our own selves. A God a little in our own image.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes, You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

I know I’m shaping God in my own image when God starts exhibiting signs of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Do not blaspheme My Name – do not say that I will do things that I would never do. Do not try to invoke Me, like I Am a genie in a bottle. Do not tell Me what I can and cannot do. You are not Me – I am Other.

Do not quench the Spirit. I Am. I will be Who I will be. But still I will draw you a picture – I will carve words for you on stone. I will knit you an image of blood and bone, and make the words live. Word made flesh – nothing lost in translation. Behold the face of Peace. Behold the face of Love and Wholeness, Wisdom and Truth, Honour, Mercy, Grace, Strength and Sacrifice.

This is what I meant, back when I said ‘Thou Shalt Not’.

Do not worship splinters – love the whole of Me with all that you are, as I love the whole of you with all that I Am. Do not form any image of Me – you are My image, My Own reflection in the mirror. I am One and you are many – though the mirror shatters, My image cannot be shattered.

Do not distort My image by lying and stealing and cheating and wounding and gossiping and hoarding and self-preserving and coveting, because these are things I would never do. But be patient, be kind, be generous, bring healing, show mercy, pour out grace, touch the untouchable, lift the fallen, cover the naked, defend those unjustly treated, release the captives, guard the truth, strengthen the weak, walk humbly, love – because you are My people made in My Own image, and because that is Who I Am.

I crafted you from mud, in the beginning. With My hands I moulded you, and with My breath I blew life into you. I created you in My Own image.

From the beginning you are the metaphor.

 

But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18

THE WORD

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. I wonder how many times John wrote and rewrote those words, shuffled them around, scratched them out and started over, banged his head on the table, read them aloud to himself, second guessed, edited and re-edited to get it just right. He was inspired, there’s not a doubt in my mind about that. Those words are solid rock Truth.

Words are big. They’re the stuff of beginnings. They fall firmly into the realm of stuff God does - parting waters, making the sun stand still, burning bushes, casting words across the universe. Even before nothing formed into something, God had voice and God was speaking.

I wonder if God feels the acid in the belly after the words are out there. I wonder if the Godhead ever reflects, Wow, We know so many different kinds of people, and they all know different parts of Us. There are a lot of people We really care about who actually have no idea who We even are. What We really want to say is going to seriously affect the way they think about Us, and they might not even get it. Let Us choose Our words very, very carefully. Nobody writes a story like God does, yet even God only got six chapters in before being flooded with a desire to bury the whole sorry thing under a 40 day avalanche of rain.

I feel my own words in my belly, in the back of my throat, behind my knees. I shape them carefully, I wrestle with them and yet they still come out wrong. They burn my lips and I vomit them onto strangers.

Writing is riskier than a tattoo. When you tell people you want to write, they should caution you. They should say, “Imagine you at 90. Are you going to be able to live with those words you write 50 years from now when your mind is shrivelled? When some stranger is giving you a bath in a care home, how will you feel about the written word then?” If you’re going to write something down, you have to be sure that it’s what you really want to say, that you could say it out loud to your husband or your mother or a stranger and it would still be true, and that you will still be glad you wrote it how you did even if it disappoints – even if it twists and sags and morphs over time.