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The Invisible God
Mike Miller
Our invisible God was big news in the ancient world. Egyptian
Gods were many, their likenesses chiseled into temple walls and
columns. Enormous statues of their gods are still standing, in
the Egyptian desert and city alike. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome,
Canaan, Assyria - everywhere, representations of various gods
were crafted and worshiped for eons.
But Judaism forbade that practice. There is no doubt at all that
according to Torah, our God is intangible and invisible. We cannot
see God, and we cannot touch God. But why?
This may seem like an odd question, if we take as a given that
God is, in fact, invisible. I e-mailed this question to a reknown
scholar - "Why is it so important that the Jewish God must be
invisible?" He answered - "Because God is beyond all the five
senses."
Well, that's a great answer to the question "How is God invisible?"
or "This is what invisible means." But it does not answer - why?
Is it impossible to believe in an ethical monotheism whose God
is visible? We do have plenty of symbols. The menorah, the Magen
David, the eternal light, the chai, and so on. But none, after
all, represent a likeness of God.
Some Biblical scholars claim that the Jews received the idea of
one God from the Egyptian Akhenaten. But his one god was the sun
- a very large object, with much mass and diameter, too far away
to touch, but still visible.
Christians believe in God, but they also believe that Jesus is
God, and there are plenty representations of Jesus. Every other
religion in the world, except perhaps Islam, allows, and even
encourages, images of the deity. So what's the big deal? Why do
we have to worship an abstract God?
I think it is because our conception of God has everything to
do with the positive attributes of God's character. Our God is
the source of loving kindness. Can you make a statue of kindness?
Can you touch justice, or weigh love? Is honesty a thing? Can
we build a monument that looks like truth? Does faith have dimensions?
Can we put mercy in a box? What are the measures of courage, or
the shape of wisdom? What does hope look like? How big is Holiness?
Every physical thing, including our sun, eventually decays. But
not so the eternal values that we place above everything else.
The timeless ideals that we live and die for, the things that
give meaning to lives and purpose to life - they are intangible
and invisible.
How could our God, who made us in God's image so that we can strive
for goodness, possibly be represented by anything more than nothing?
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