The week of Martin Luther King Jr Day, Jonah’s VPK class was talking about diversity and how God made different people with different skin colors. The conversation that followed went something like this:
Jonah: Is God also lots of different colors?
Missy: I don’t know Jonah, I haven’t ever seen God.
Jonah: Me neither.
Jonah, thanks for helping us get outside the box thinking about a God who is more outside the box than we often give Him credit for. When you are younger, you haven’t formed too many boxes to put things in, in your thinking. But as we age, we like to construct neat ideological boxes that we place people, places and things in. That can be helpful if done with a dose of humility.
Now for the part you might not have expected in a post about four year old’s and their view of God. Progressive Christians tend to bash legalistic Christians for boxing up God but the truth is both sides have boxed up God. The difference between legalists and progressives is that they both have God in a box, the progressive’s box just tends to have more holes poked in it and less tape sealing up every conceivable seam. So let’s be challenged a bit by the imagination of a four year old and ask ourselves if our perception of God (no matter which way you lean theologically) is fair and be humble enough to admit that there is more to God than we can ever imagine, nail down, box up, or try to contain. Who wants to serve a God that can be boxed up anyway?
One Response
Interesting read. It’ll be awesome when we all get to see for ourselves what He looks like.