Our Biased View of Jesus
Getting our heads around the character and nature of God is an impossible task. But, since we seek to have a relationship with Him, it’s only natural that we would try.
We have to be careful when we do that, though. If we don’t remember that to some degree He will always be beyond our comprehension then we will fall into the common error of putting God in a box.
C.S. Lewis spoke to this idea, saying, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast.” In other words, as soon as you think you get how God works, He shows you a side of Himself you might have missed or under appreciated.
Consider, for example, these two seemingly contradictory descriptions of Jesus.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
- Matthew 11:28-30
“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.”
- Revelation 19:11-13
Gentle and lowly… and making war with flaming eyes and a blood-dipped robe. Same Jesus.
It is human nature to put more emphasis on one of these two sides of Jesus. There will always be some who over-do law and obedience and others who will overdo grace and love.
You can see it in the way all the man-made religions tend to pick one or the other. Muslims serve a hard-nosed, strict, violent God with little tenderness to be found. American churchianity drifts further and further toward a tender God with no capacity for wrath. Even from congregation to congregation you can get a feel which side of God they prefer if they start to get out of balance.
But this isn’t just an issue from one religion to another or from church to church. Every human heart is pulled in one of these two directions. You and I are pulled by our human nature to view God as strict and distant due to His holiness, or open and friendly due to His love, each elevating their preferred characterizations of God at the expense of the other.
Because it is so ingrained in us to think this way, balance is difficult to achieve. The solution requires two steps:
First, we must recognize our biases to the best of our ability.
Blind spots are called blind spots for a reason. Still, hard as it is to see them, I think we can all broadly which direction we lean on this issue. I am more of a law-minded type who appreciates God’s holiness but doesn’t always properly emphasize His love and grace. That might be you, too, or you might be the opposite.
Second, let God be God when we study His Word and pray to Him.
Our biases make us gravitate toward the passages which show the side of God we prefer. And, when we come across passages showing the other side, we tend to immediately insert counterpoints to keep the balance of His character where we like it. Instead we have to trust that He is loving, and believe He is holy. Let each text speak for itself to create a full-orbed picture of God’s character as He has revealed Himself.
We will never fully grasp an infinite God, and that’s ok. What’s important is that we remove our biased goggles and observe Him in the way He wants us to see Him.
This article first appeared on Focus+