It has been said that "In the beginning God made man in His image, and man has returned the favor ever since".
What does this mean? It means that in nearly every area our "theology" (thoughts and words we say about God) has been shaped by how we view ourselves. The opposite is also true, how we view our God is largely shaped by how we view ourselves. If we abhor something, we naturally assume that our God abhors the same thing. We can't stand people of a different sexual preference, so we assume that God cannot.
And so it goes. We continue shaping God, molding Him into our image. We do as Paul said in Romans 1:23 - "making the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man". We cling to idols we have made in our minds, some shaped by preconceived notions of God found on the pages of our bibles, others shape by societal and parental pressure. We hold on to personal vendettas and carve a little more of the idol, until in the end we have a God that looks more and more like a mirror image of ourselves rather than the forever loving Abba of Jesus Christ.
It's time we knock our idols down. It's time we look to these graven images and insist that they will no longer have any sway over the revelation Jesus has given to us about His Father - whom He called "your Father" to a massive group of unbelievers. The moment we begin using our bibles, doctrines, theological constructs, personal preferences and the like to defend a God that looks nothing like Jesus, we are caught in the midst of idolatry. Brennan Manning has this amazing statement in his book "Abba's Child" where he says: "Have you grappled with the core question of your faith, which is not ‘Is Jesus God-like?’ but ‘Is God Jesus-like”.
