God in the Box

And Another Thing . . . God in the Box

The documentary “God in the Box” was a Heartland Film Festival selection for 2011. The premise is pretty straightforward. A portable box is constructed with cameras hidden behind a mirror. Random pedestrians walking by are invited to go inside the box and answer one or two questions about God . The first question is, “What does God mean to you?” and the second is, “What does God look like?”

The answers surprised me. Some were funny, like the girl who thought God looked sort of like Kenny Rogers. Some were sad, like the burly, shaved-head guy in sunglasses who said, “God used to mean everything to me . . . but not anymore.” Some were quirky, like the Elvis impersonator who said, “God is sort of like Elvis . . .” The Hindu and Muslim participants seemed to have a bit clearer perspective on how to address the question. Several people spoke of the way that God had changed their lives for the better. Several others were atheists who felt the whole question was the province of the ignorant, superstitious, or uninformed.  One man who claimed to be an atheist  said, “I wish could believe in God, because I would probably be happier.” 

Mystery is inherent in any discussion about God. God cannot be perceived by our senses and so he is intangible. Intangible is hard to quantify. Still, people claim to experience God but typically in an extrasensory way . The language that is used to describe these encounters is almost always on an emotional scale. We sense God’s presence and immediately wonder if it was perhaps something we ate. We have learned to not trust our emotions, and yet our emotions are an important part of any encounter with spiritual things. This quickly becomes confusing. At one point in the documentary, the narrator says something to the effect of, “I wish God would just show himself to us and clear this whole thing up!”

That of course, from the Christian perspective, is exactly what he did. The great grace of the Jesus event was that God revealed himself by becoming one of us. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.” “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Jesus entered the human story and showed us how God would act if he were in our shoes. He loved deeply. He pursued truth. He sacrificed his life. In his love he gave all of himself to others as he submitted himself to God.

God looks like Jesus. 

And that is all I have to say about that . . . for now!