"Visualization..........................."

The “Faith Meets World” link on my sidebar connects me with a friend recently encountered over the Internet, a place where his thoughts encourage discussion concerning Biblical matters and the two of thus far fairly close in our theology. He lives in England. His denominational preference is yet unknown to me and, in truth, doesn’t matter to this old man. We talk “of” Christ, “in” Christ, and “seek” Christ as a Resurrection still leading us in this journey we have undertaken. His latest post, however, has me searching, both the Book and the Spirit’s influence, in how to respond to the subject brought forth. Is God “fear”, or is He “love”? Should we simply scrap the image that comes to us via the Old Testament and replace them with New Testament verses that express His character in much more attractive terms? For me, it’s not so much whether the Creator “is” any particular attribute (How can we separate Him into individual units of anything?), but rather how He is “to be received” by us in so far as any relationship attempted in this life as it comes to us. There are those who think Him “evil”, in the sense that natural disasters occur, seemingly with His consent. Hitlers, serial killers, and child molesters are cancers, not divinely eradicated, but brought to judgment only in as much as we, ourselves, attack the disease. The question, therefore, as I see it, becomes “How has He been taught to us by the Church and by those who claim membership within the faith”, for all we possess other than that is what our environment, our culture, and our history has reinforced in our brain. When Rob suggests that the Old Testament portrait of God is not there to tell us what He is like, but “to show us that this is how we humans, in our fallen, damaged, fearful state, see God”, projecting “our fears onto him and assuming that he is angry and to be feared”; and thus, in believing such lie, “we actually keep ourselves locked into that fear-filled condition”, I personally find him “right on the mark”, but ask myself why it is so. There most certainly is that aspect of the Father which is to be held in reverence, a knowledge of Him that recognizes Him in all His potential; but there is also the possibility of our gaining “merger”, if only temporarily, wherein we might also be convinced that we are, indeed, His children, able to come unto Him just as we are if we will but surrender all into His arms…….