“With the loyal Thou dost show Thyself loyal; with the blameless man Thou dost show thyself blameless; with the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure; and with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself perverse.”

(Psalm 18:25-26)

The Bible says that God made man in His own image, and man, as if to return the compliment, has been making God in man’s image ever since. The ruins of every ancient civilization yield up its idols. These objects of man’s religious devotion are nearly always in human form. The tombs of the Pharaohs in the pyramids and in the cliffs along the valley of the Nile give forth their 10,000-year-old treasures and among them are images of deities fashioned like men. The Greeks and Romans commissioned their most skillful sculptors to cut from stone or mould in metal images of their Olympian gods in the exact form of men.

Though St. Paul argued skillfully with the Athenians that “we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, or graven by art and man’s device,” and the unknown writer of the Epistle to Diognetus, back in the second century, scorned the stupidity of idolaters who made God in their own image and worshipped “a wooden statue already rotting away, or one made of silver that needs a watchman to protect it from being stolen” — even yet men are still at it — even Christian men — making God in their own image.

We do not have to follow the example of the African who carves the funny looking misshapen man out of his ebony or mahogany tree and falls down to worship it; nor even be like the American Indian, fashioner of fantastic totem poles, in order to make God in man’s image; we may make God in man’s image in more spiritual and injurious ways.

There are people, for example, who worship a Managing Director God. Mr. Phillips finds him the favorite deity of so many modern educated men and women. This Managing Director God is a deity made in man’s own image. His devotees think “the God who is responsible for the terrifying vastnesses of the universe cannot possibly be interested in the lives of the minute specks of consciousness which exist on this insignificant planet.” Such a worshipper says: “I cannot imagine such a tremendous God, having so much to do in his vast universe, being interested in me.” At first blush it seems that here is a super-gigantic idea of God, but in reality it is just another case of making God in man’s image — of building up a mental picture of God from our knowledge and experience of man, and concluding that since man has his limitations of interest and concern for other human beings, that there are just so many and no more that one could know and take care of — then God would be just like that. It is to forget that it belongs to the very nature of omnipotence and omniscience to keep track of each sparrow’s fall and to count each hair on the small child’s head.

Then there is the Paper Doll God — the God some men worship — who is clear and bright and real from one viewpoint, but that is the one and only facet of his being. Some folks worship a God who has a concern, a message, and a judgment on only one aspect of life, such as sex, or money, or the race question. He is a God made in man’s image because limited by man’s interest and concern.

When Howard Thurman graduated from Seminary, Dr. George Cross, his professor in Systematic Theology, called him into his office and said to him: “Howard Thurman, you have the capacity to become one of the great original creative thinkers; to influence the religious thought of our nation, perhaps of the whole world, if you are not tampered with! Because you are a Negro you may be tricked into using all your valuable creativity in fighting the race question. The race question is a social question and all social questions are temporary. Suppose Jesus had used all His energies in fighting the Roman Empire? Address your mind to the timeless questions of the human spirit! You have that kind of mind.” (Atlantic Monthly — October 1953)

And then there is the Democratic God, made in the image of modern man and so widely worshiped in our time, a deity so broad and wide and latitudinarian as to have no depth — so covered with sticky, sweet, oozing brotherliness that he possesses no towering statue of moral integrity.

As Macneile Dixon said in The Human Situation: “Each man seeks a deity after his own heart.” Or, in Spinoza’s acid phrase, “a community of triangles would worship a triangular God.” Man is still at it making God in his own image.

Why this persistent practice of man across the centuries, of making God in man’s image? The Psalmist sees it as an inevitable working out of the divine law: “With the loyal Thou wilt show Thyself loyal; with the blameless man Thou dost show Thyself blameless; with the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure; with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself perverse.” (Psalm 18:25-26) In other words, the Psalmist says that God’s revelation of Himself to a man is in a measure conditioned by what that man is. And please note that the Psalmist says it is not what the man knows but what he is which determines how the man shall know God.

Joseph Parker says: “Wherein we are pure, we see the holiness of the father. (“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Some said it thundered, others said an angel spoke to him.”) Wherein we are merciful, we share the divine compassion.” The legalistic Pharisees could not know the mercy of the Lord for sinners and outcasts so they could not comprehend the divinity of Jesus’ mercy for them. One of the most pitiful things in life is to run into a hard, stern, self-righteous person who has been ever so hard on others who one day himself slips up and sins grievously. He is miserably inconsolable because he cannot believe in a God who would forgive. His unforgiving heart cannot forgive himself, and his God, made in his own image, cannot forgive. The way to know the divine father of unlimited compassionate forgiveness is to begin to practice forgiveness.

There are three great emphases in Hebrew Christian prophetic teaching: First, the moral and ethical nature of God. He is just and pure and merciful and forgiving, not capricious, vain, or licentious. Second, and it follows from the first, that acceptable worship to this moral and ethical God is obedience to His moral and ethical principles and laws. “I hate, I despise, your solemn feasts … I will take no pleasure in your burnt offerings, but let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” The third great emphasis of prophetic Hebrew Christian religion is that knowledge of this moral and ethical God is conditioned by the moral and ethical nature of man. The same heat will melt wax and harden bricks. Man’s nature, morally, determines what God is to him. Some men are spiritually colorblind — they cannot see the green of His forgiveness, nor the red of His wrath.

What does this mean for us? How can we ever be delivered from the hopeless idolatry of making God in our own image? Well, He has revealed Himself here through the Bible, you know, and supremely in Jesus Christ: if we will take the trouble to acquaint ourselves with Him. What we have to do is to respond with all our being to whatever we have seen and known of God in His merciful self-revelation and move on from knowledge to knowledge. Like Tennyson’s Gwenivere, we must love the highest when we see it, before it is too late. Like Martin Luther, pledging himself before his accusers, we must be captive to conscience. Whatever we have seen and known of God we must be conscientiously true to in thought, word, and deed, or our little light perceived will be turned to darkness; our knowledge perverted to folly.

Here we see the importance of actually answering the call to heed God’s word that “truth may be in order to goodness” and goodness place us in a position to receive and know more truth. Always new insights into the nature of God and eternal reality are granted to us by God contingent upon our learning one lesson at a time, acting upon it, putting it into practice; and then God leads us on to another step. But greater knowledge in the spiritual realm can never come without a corresponding moral action.

In response to the persistent call of October’s bright blue weather, the cool brisk air and the warm sun, we drove up into the Blue Ridge, along the skyline drive. Immediately we were impressed with the peace of the high places. When we stopped at the first lookout point we could hear no sound but the ticking of the automobile clock and the rustle of the crisping leaves on the mountain slopes as the silent wind swept past. And away off in the distance, forty miles away, one could see the dim outline of the Shenandoah Ridge on the far side of the valley, the immense stretches of the cloud streaked sky above, the silent valley dotted with houses and farm buildings — a wisp of smoke here and there spiraling slowly up — too far away to see any movement of man — to hear his voice or the scream of his machines. All anxiety, all striving, all petty ambitions, that drive and strain and stretch us, were stripped from our souls and we were at peace with ourselves and our God and our fellows — all because we slipped the bonds of earth and took the perspective of the eternal hills. Our response to God’s gift of glory in the magnificent autumnal beauty of His high mountain ranges brought peace to our souls, and comfort and deepened assurance, by lifting us up out of the nagging cares and small irritations of the day. We would not have known the beauty of His peace, the comfort of His mercy, had we not responded to His insistent appeal and lifted up our eyes to the hills in their glorious array. Had we remained in the flats, bending and sweating under our heavy burden, our spirits would have remained as oppressed as they were.

So must we respond to His call to come up on the higher levels of morality and spirituality or we cannot know Him as He is in the glory of His beauty and the power of His love. There is a story of a harassed person who died and went to meet his creator. At the judgment bar the Lord asked His minister: “Tell me, for I’ve often wondered, what did you think of the glories of My created universe?” “Well,” stammered the embarrassed preacher, “I — I, never noticed it. I was busy talking on the telephone.”

And the wonder of God’s revelation of His moral excellence in Jesus Christ, have you ever noticed it to the extent of emulating His example, practicing His pronouncements — or have you been too busy expanding your own ego — making God in your own image, doomed to worship a God too small for you because your own moral perversity will not permit you to know Him in His true glory?

Christiana, Pilgrim’s wife in Bunyan’s story, is shown “a man who could look no way but downwards, with a muck rake in his hand. There stood one over his head, with a celestial crown in his hand, and offered him that crown for his muck-rake; but the man did neither look up, nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor. Whereupon Christiana prayed: “O deliver me from this muck rake.” And the divine interpreter said to Christiana: “That prayer has lain by till it is almost rusty. Give me not riches is scarce the prayer of one of ten thousand. Sticks and straws and dust, with most, are the great things now looked after.”

Oh, if we would only take the time to lift up our eyes from the sticks and stones and dust which clutter the floor of our common way and take one long look at Jesus Christ — and act out here what we see there of His glory — how that would liberate our souls from their slavish selfish ambitions, how it would strip away the nagging cares and stupid anxieties of our world bound minds, how it would stretch our knowledge and enjoyment of God into the measure of the fullness of the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Yes, “Christ comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old He came by the lakeside to the disciples who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me,’ and sets us to the tasks He must fulfill for our time. He commands, and to those who obey Him, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery they shall learn in their own experience who He is.” (A. Schweitzer)

PASTORAL PRAYER

O Thou who hast fashioned earth and sky to show forth the beauty of Thy face and the majesty of ways, who hast arranged the body of Thy earth in autumn’s brightest colors — show us also the beauty of Thy moral and spiritual universe. Make us to behold the magnificence of Thy moral law as did the Psalmist and rejoice in keeping it. May we discern as did the disciples of old the grace and truth of Thy beloved Son and hail Him as our fairest Lord Jesus. Grant that we may behold beauty in the rich color of the character of Thy saints and admire them to the extent of trying to be like them.

O use us to put beauty where there is now ugliness in our common life — to fashion form and orderliness where there is confusion, “to give richness for poverty, beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”

O Thou who touchest earth and sky with beauty and transforms the desolate heart to show forth Thy beauty, we pray Thee to touch with Thy transforming grace those who are beyond our power to help — even in the power of Thy spirit: the sick and discouraged, those who have suffered long and life is almost gone, the sorely tempted — the afflicted in mind and spirit — those who imagine themselves God forsaken. Take them, O merciful Father, in to Thy powerful grasp and dawn upon their darkened lives the glory of Thy beauty.