a caricature of God

my dad has the same name as a famous tennis player who shall remain nameless. i think he was still in the spotlight when i was young, but i have a hard time remembering back that far... those were the days when athletic talent mattered more than how the athlete looked on the cover of a magazine. anyway, dad played it up from time to time. once he even got a caricature drawn, the size of his head greatly exaggerated, swinging a tennis racket with some caption and a reference to bobby riggs. so much for remaining nameless...

caricatures are normally humorous drawings, because they take an existing facial feature and exaggerate that feature to ridiculous proportions. certain celebrities are just naturally suited to be drawn in such a way: gw, his goofy grin and ears that remind me of an eight year old ron howard sitting on the lap of andy griffith when he still had some color in his hair; saddam and the saggy jowels, whose mustache rivals only that of tom selleck in his ferrari-driving days, and richard branson, mogul of virgin fame.

in reading this morning, i came across a quote from william shannon, about how we caricature God. we often take a particular aspect of God's character, and exaggerate it to wildly grotesque proportions in an attempt to persuade lesser-read followers to a certain end, or to push ourselves to behaving better, or to beat ourselves up for behaving badly.

A false and illusory notion of God…sees God as someone who is gracious to me when i am good, but who punishes me relentlessly when i am bad. This is a typical patriarchal notion of God. He is the God of noah who sees people deep in sin, repents that he made them and resolves to destroy them. He is the God of the desert who sends snakes to bite his people because they murmured against Him. He is the God of David who practically decimates a people, because their king, motivated by pride perhaps, takes up a census of his empire. He is the God who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son, so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased. This God whose moods alternate between graciousness and fierce anger, a god who is still all too familiar to many Christians—is a caricature of the true God. This god does not exist. This is not the God whom Jesus reveals to us. this is not the God whom Jesus calls “Abba”.

truly, we cannot exaggerate any characteristic of God, because He is an infinite God. His grace is infinite. His wrath is infinite. but for every sin that ever has and ever will be committed, His inifinite wrath has been poured out already, once and for all, on Jesus. for those who rest in Him, there is no condemnation, for He took it upon Himself. right here is the part where we all stand and shout, "Hallelujah!" -- praise God for His infinite grace, His infinite love, His infinite kindness which cannot be exaggerated.

Romans 8:1 [KJV]

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus...