ANTHROPOMORPHISM

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let’s think about anthropomorphism.

In my early years when my theology was bright eyed and bushy tailed, I took an introductory religion class wherein I heard the word “anthropomorphism” for the first time.

Throughout human history men and women have imagined their gods possessing human characteristics.

It was the following quote by Xenophanes, who lived circa 570 to 475 BCE, that put more bright into the eye of my theology and trimmed some of the bushiness in it. 

This may well be the earliest statement concerning the sociology of religion ever:

But if cattle and horses and lions had hands

Or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,

Horses like horses and cattle like cattle

Also would depict the gods’s shapes and make their bodies of such a sort as the form they themselves have.

Ethiopians say their gods are snub nosed and black

Thracians that they are pale and red haired.

If Xenophanes had been alive today, he would observe that Europeans and their American descendants say their god has long brown hair, blue eyes, perfect teeth, high cheek bones, and a goy nose. 

You know…think of Jeffrey Hunter, Max Von Sydow, Jim Caviezel, and Dogo Morgado with long hair. 

This is all good for us, my brothers and sisters and friends, for it means no one has the least idea who God is.  We as a species are connecting to God and imagining God as we go along.

We who claim to be followers of Jesus the Christ figure if any people can imagine God to be a red haired, snub nosed, vindictive, or warlike then it is just as valid for us to imagine God as love. 

The second commandment ingeniously forbids any graven image of God.  So not only is it impossible to really know who God is, it is forbidden to think we do know who God is. 

God is love in our lore.  That truly is the highest, most sublime imagining of God ever.  That’s just as valid how lesser forms of deity are fancied and lovelier to boot!

Now, I don’t believe that Christians are the only ones who “got it right” when it comes to God.  That seems at worst arrogant and at best naive.  But I do believe that our devotion to a God who is not jealous sets a higher standard for any religion.

It certainly sets a higher standard for us to demonstrate love to this love starved, beleaguered world.  If, centuries ago, our church had loved instead of hated, our world might be a nicer place now.

It’s not too late.  It is our call for the next thousand years to turn this world thing around by loving it to health and happiness.

Blessings…