I recently showed Shadowlands (the true story of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy – a MUST watch) to my students which caused me to read Lewis’s A Grief Observed – his reflections on pain and suffering. Within the context of mourning the loss of a loved one, Lewis discusses our view of God. He says that just as our “image” or perception of someone is always changing, so our image of God is always changing. Let me quote at length:
Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular. (It makes little difference whether they are pictures and statues outside the mind or imaginative constructions within it.) To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images – sacrosanct. 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. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers.
All reality is iconoclastic. (Lewis, A Grief Observed, page 52)
“Reality is iconoclastic.” Reality tears down our constructed images (icons) and ideas about God. Just when we think we have God nailed down He acts, He surprises, He is. The danger is that we begin to worship our idea of God rather than the Living God Himself; we exalt our theology (words about God) over the Theo Logos (God-Word, John 1).
“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth below or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” (Exodus 20:4,5). God forbids our bowing down to our own theologies and ideas of God; he requires that we worship Him – the true Living God, the great I AM.
