About Jesus  -  Steve Sweetman

Humanizing The Divine

One of humanity's greatest sins is its intentional and continual attempts to humanize the divine.  Early human history records the creation of wood and stone gods that were fashioned after the likeness and image of our fallen imaginations.  Even God's chosen people, after being miraculously delivered from Egypt , erected their golden calf.  Christians tend to view these attempts to humanize the divine as feeble minded and foolish, but history shows that we fall into the same folly.  From the time when Christians in Galatia humanized the divine by replacing the power of the Spirit of God with human effort (Galatians 3:1 - 5) to today's Evangelical church that routinely replaces the Holy Spirit's power with tradition and human effort, nothing has changed. 

There is no need to humanize the divine because God has already done that.  The Apostle John explained that "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:1 and 14).  To the casual reader of the Bible this sounds nonsensical.  To the Biblically educated it's the foundation of our faith which frees us from the futility of fabricating gods from our fallen imaginations.  John's words imply that Jesus is the doorway to a greater reality that exists beyond our dimensional space time universe.       

According to the definition of the Greek word "logos" translated as "Word" in John 1:1 and 14, along with the Genesis account of creation John references, we understand the very mind of God, a personality in itself, became human in the bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In anthropomorphic terms that man can understand, the mind of God was birthed into humanity as God's Son.  Attempts to duplicate this in any way are more than feeble minded.  It's sinfully blasphemous. 

Despite my limited understanding of quantum physics, I realize that there is a reality that is more real than the human existence in which I live.  Genesis 1:26 says that God created man in His likeness and image.  According to my understanding of the Hebrew text, likeness and image means a shadowy reflection.  God did not create man as a duplicate of Himself but as a shadowy or foggy reflection of Himself.  Further to this, I understand from other Bible passages that all of creation is a shadow of an unseen reality, and since Genesis 3, a fallen shadowy reflection that is subject to decay and death, otherwise known as entropy. 

We are told that 95% of our material environment, including our bodies, is empty space, although it's not really empty.  It's filled with matter unseen by the human eye but impacts the entire universe on every front.  I don't know, but maybe our time space existence is the shadowy image of God's heavenly creation that exists in this so-called unseen 95% of empty space. 

However you view this, humanizing, trivializing, and rationalizing this spiritual reality away, is Scripturally stupid.  If humanity can escape the grip of death and decay long enough, maybe it will come to admit what the Bible has taught all along.  There is a greater reality beyond our human existence where the centrality of God's presence exists.  Until then, or until the universe evaporates before the presence of God (Revelation 20:11) I am eternally thankful for God becoming human in the bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ.  All of the full divine nature; all of who God is, dwells in Jesus (Colossians 2:9).  Jesus is the doorway into this greater reality.  There is no need to humanize the divine or substitute His power with fallen human effort.  The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has done it all for us.  We simply trust our lives with Him and humbly embrace His divine will for our lives and for the time space world in which we live.