GOD AND ICE CREAM CONES

Close your eyes and think in concrete images about a cone of your favorite icecream flavor. What flavor are you visualizing? The answers vary from pistachio nut to raspberry ripple. We have little trouble contemplating ice cream cones in concrete terms.

Close your eyes again. This time think in concrete images about God — not God the Son, not God the Holy Spirit, but God the Father.

A little tougher? Some people respond by saying they visualize “love.” The concept love is as abstract as the concept God and gives us little concrete insight into what or who God is. These people mean that the word God evokes positive feelings similar to feelings evoked by the word love.

This association reveals something of our personal relationship with God, but adds little to concrete imagination. With a little effort, though, most people can conjure up a mental image for the word God.

A child’s images differ little from those of a theological scholar. The images may be of an old man with a beard on a white throne or Michelangelo’s God of creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The image may be a cloud of gray smoke, a red button on a massive instrument panel, a beloved family member, a volcanic eruption; a nuclear explosion, a lightning flash across a black sky, a brilliant white light, or a giant brain.

Now answer a question: Do you think God is a cloud of smoke, a volcanic eruption, or a giant brain? Of course not! God cannot be absolutely identified with any of these images. But the ideas still communicate something concrete about God. They help pour substance into the term God, which is hazy and ambiguous, yet still meaningful.

Analyze the images mentioned above and others you may have come up with. Each concept is similar to the others. All describe God in common, familiar human terms. All help us think of God analogically. God is in some way like the white light or the red button, though God extends far beyond the likeness of the analogy. The Bible’s references to God also take advantage of human, analogous images.

Adapted from Sproul, R. C. (2000). Renewing your mind: basic Christian beliefs you need to know (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

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