Facing Up to God’s Reality

At what may be considered the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the news reporting of anecdotal response at the personal level was often finely focused. One of the elements of news, after all, is reporting on the way in which events impact the individual, how a man or woman is responding personally to the times.

As to that pandemic in the early 2020s, for example, one couple was married in an outdoor ceremony in the middle of the street in their neighborhood, with all participants except the couple observing the mandatory social-distancing standards.

Another item that drew the attention of the media was that of a state legislator in Ohio who was refusing to wear a protective mask in public. Representative Nino Vitale declared that he would not wear a mask, asserting that the United States was established on a basis that “‘we are all created in the image and likeness of God.’” He said that God’s likeness was most obvious in the human face, and “‘I want to see it.’”1

If it weren’t so typical of the appalling way in which conservative Christianity was representing itself in today’s society, the Ohio legislator’s remark would be almost humorous. His application to a foundational theological belief so common to the Christian must certainly have aroused little more than ridicule from anyone else at a time when loving our neighbors could well be construed as protecting them (and oneself) from a plague.

It isn’t as if this idea of being created in God’s image is a relatively minor theological detail. It’s right there in the very first chapter of the first book of Scripture. “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness’” (Gen. 1:26, NIV). And the word-for-word expression, “‘in our image’” occurs in virtually every faithful translation of the Old Testament.

“With this phrase, which marks the last work of creation, we reach the boldest affirmation of the remarkably unique relationship between humans and God—humans resemble God.”2 However someone may interpret belief in this concept to apply it in the dreadful times of a pandemic, it is still certainly the beginning of a significant answer to one of humankind’s most existential questions.

And one of the implications of this answer is the inevitable reality of God’s personhood. He isn’t merely a force, an idea, or a principle. Throughout Scripture are evidences of this. The experiences of two biblical characters offer some confirmation.

The patriarch Jacob, in an all-night mental struggle to overcome his fear and guilt over an impending meeting with his brother, whom he had cheated years before, was also enduring a physical struggle. There, on the banks of the River Jabbok, Jacob wrestled bodily with an adversary of apparent superhuman strength. By the coming of daybreak, they seemed to be deadlocked. Then the being touched Jacob’s hip, dislocating it. This was no dream—no mere nightmare. It was real.

But Jacob would not let go of his opponent. When the being said to let go of his hold, Jacob asked his name and begged a blessing. “‘Why is it that you ask my name?”’ he answered answered. “And there he blessed him” (Gen. 32:29, ESV).

Jacob, during that struggle renamed “Israel” because he had “‘striven with God and with men, and . . . prevailed’” (vs. 28, ESV), named that place of his night-long ordeal “Peniel,” which means “the face of God.” “‘I have seen God face to face,’” he declared, “‘yet my life has been spared’” (vs. 30, NASB, italics supplied).

It appears to happen as well, this direct physical contact—this encounter of the utmost kind—generations later between God and a human being, for Moses. This direct descendant of that same renamed Israel and leader of the people known as Israelites, would come to the seat of His worship, and “the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp” (Ex. 33:11, NIV). This suggests at least some qualities of God reflected in those of humankind.

In one of such instances, Moses pleaded, “‘Show me your glory” (vs. 18, NRSV).

But this would have been more than Moses would—or any human being—be able to bear. “‘You cannot see My face,’” God said, “‘for no man can see Me and live!’” (vs. 20, NASB).

Instead, God positioned Moses carefully. “‘While my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen’” (vss. 22, 23, ESV).

There are here telling references to a physicality similar, though unquestionably transcending, that of humanity. Can it be any wonder that when “Moses came down from Mount Sinai,” he “did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (34:29, NRSV).

In commenting on this personal face-to-face contact with God, one writer suggests that “‘passing by’ need not be understood to mean that God adopted a human form—there is no suggestion of this in the sequel, where the fulfilment is purely verbal. He was to see God’s ‘back,’ i.e. understand him in retrospect, in the light of what he had done.”3

It is true that Scripture includes the use of metaphor, especially in its poetry and even, sometimes, in its prose. Probably the most comforting of all the psalms begins, “The Lord is my shepherd” (Ps. 23:1, KJV). And the apostle Paul exulted, “I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain” (Phil. 2:16, NLT). No literal meaning of shepherd or race is intended here; they are figurative expressions.

But evidences of God’s physicality—of His personhood—occur in too many places throughout Scripture to dismiss them as merely metaphorical. He also has a voice. After six days of creation, in which He spoke everything into physical existence—ex nihilo—He spoke to His two eternal Associates, “‘Let us make humankind in our image’” (Gen. 1:26, NRSV). Then He “formed aman from the dust of the ground” (2:7, NIV).

The accounts of Jacob in that all-night wrestling match and Moses in the tabernacle and on the mountaintop are records of actual, historical events. Each of them—authored by Moses himself—was intended as a representation of reality. God is, before and after all, as real as reality can be. And we, as individual human beings, were created for relationship with Him.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. “Only in America,” The Week (May 15, 2020): 6.

2. Genesis: Seventh-day Adventist International Bible Commentary (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press, 2016), 62. Italics supplied.

3. H. L. Ellison, Exodus, The Daily Bible Study Series (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982),178.