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?
Not my idea of God, but God.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
How true this is. This is human nature, to create images of God, and then to focus on, I would say to exalt, and in the worst of times, to idolize (i.e., to worship, to commit idolatry) those images.
I love the image of God as the “great iconoclast.” And often, he uses other people – sometimes, the very Other, e.g., people from a different religious tradition altogether – to shatter our images.
May God “show up” (as some people put it) and shatter our images of Him, whenever and however necessary.
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