What Does God Look Like?

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:14-18)

          What does God look like? There’s a story of a little boy who told his mother that he was drawing God. The mother said, “No one knows what God looks like.”
          “When I’m done, they will,” the boy replied.
         After church yesterday, a few of us were talking about this. One loves a picture of Jesus with his head thrown back, laughing. I have a portrait of Jesus with His face buried in the pelt of a lamb He’s holding. Some people think we should promote any portrait of Jesus that is not a Caucasian. Some like to picture him as being of African, Asian or South American descent. I have one friend who proclaimed as a matter of fact that Jesus was “black skinned” because the Jews are of the same racial group as the Egyptians, Egyptians are African and Africans and black-skinned.
          I think this is part of the reason that God commanded the Israelites not to make images of Him. First, of course, there is the fact that because He is a spirit, He does not have a “look” that can be seen, drawn, carved, painted or otherwise depicted. But secondly, because if we made artistic renderings, out pride would get in the way. We tend to make Jesus look the way we want Him to look, which tends to be like us. Jesus was a Jew…a Semite. According to the Anthropology I leaned in elementary school, that makes Him a Caucasian. No, he wasn’t a western European with light hair and fair skin, but he was not African, Asian, or South American, either. He was Jewish. When we try to make the Father or the Son “relatable,” we are making a false statement about reality.
         That is why I tend to not like any depiction of Jesus. That is why I found the depiction of the Father from The Shack so disgusting (not because He was depicted as African American, or as woman, but that He was depicted at all and that in said depiction, He was purposely made politically correct. I was hesitant about buying the portrait I did. In fact, the only reason I did so was because it counters my instinctual ideas. I tend to see both the Father and the Son as disappointedly frowning at me. At the time, I needed something to change that perception. It’s a sketch, so it’s gray-scale. Most of His face is hidden. The point is that He’s not scowling. It's not about what He looks like. It's about how He looks.

          We don’t need to change the Father or the Son into animals, or Humans (whether African Americans, Inuits, Asians, or South Americans.) We need to see how He looks…which is why we need to look at Scripture and see Him as He was there – not make him in over in our own skin-tone.