Jesus: God’s Heart for Us/Our Heart for God
The
Christian faith envisions a God who has a “human-shaped hole” in his heart and
has created us with a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts. The latter is necessary for us, indeed, definitional
of we are. We cannot live “humanly”
without filling that God-shaped hole with God.
We constantly try to fill it with other things, but none other than God
satisfies.
On
the other hand, the “human-shaped hole” in God’s heart is not necessary or definitional
of who God is. This inclusion of
humanity in the life of God is something God chose. He has determined himself to be for us from
all eternity (Barth). Thus he has chosen
to bear a “human-shaped hole” in his heart that can only be filled by human
beings living with him in love and loyalty.
St.
Augustine (5th century) and the philosopher/theologian Blaise Pascal
(17th century) capture this double-sided truth with famous
aphorisms. Pascal wrote,
“What
else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once
in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and
trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking
in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though
none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite
and unchangeable object; in other words by God himself.” (Pensees 10.148)
Augustine
represents the “human-shaped hole” in God’s heart saying in his Confessions, “Lord,
you have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest
in you.” (Confessions 1.1.1.)”
In
Jesus Christ we see a human being filled and participating in God’s life to the
full. In him we also see God living out
his passionate longing for us to so live and fill the human-shaped hole in his
heart.
God,
as we have noted, does not “need” us in the same way that we do him. Yet his overwhelming passion for and
commitment to us means that he does not intend and will not be God “without us.”
Our
default view of God, both within and without the church, is often at odds with
this view of God. We typically operate
with some version of what I call the “God with a Scowl.” Angry, score-keeping, vengeful, seeking
retributive justice, distant with an oppressive “holiness” – these are some of
the variations of this “God with a Scowl.”
You can probably add others.
As
we can see in Jesus Christ the “God with a Scowl” is a blasphemous idol - one
that must be rejected unconditionally and vigorously! And we must insist with the Bible, and theologians
like Augustine and Pascal, and writers like C. S. Lewis and, in a very
different way, Philip Pullman, that damnable deity is a figment of our
perverted pagan or not quite fully baptized imagination. And in Christ we must cling to the gospel “good
news” against all the lies and false portrayals of deity in our culture and its
religion.
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