From the beginning of recorded history and across the world’s cultures, idol worship has always been practiced. But ancient Jews were a peculiar people, because their God forbid the making or worship of graven images. Instead, God said that they were an image of what He was like, and that one would come who would be the “exact representation of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3) Creation, without being carved or reordered in any way, represents and resembles God.
This can both draw people to God as well as repel them. It is a common experience for people to be apprehensive of God because of their life experiances. And it makes sense that God would be similar to the rest of what we have seen in our world. But the image we bare is a lot like the pictures I have left of my great grandmother: they are faded and torn around the edges with black and white spots left where the picture was damaged. The photograph is just an image, and not a perfect one, like the reflection of a cityscape off a wide, black puddle.
Mark Buchanan has said of this: “In our own hands, God has become our image bearer rather than we his.”2 God can be made out vaguely, as though “in a mirror dimly” (1Corinthians 13:12) by looking at His Creation, but we see Him most fully by experiencing Christ.
2 Buchanan, Mark. Your God is too Safe. Sisters,
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