We think about and describe God in ways that reflect who He really is and what He has actually gone through. God is a musician and an artist. He is a dancer. He is a dreamer extraordinaire. He is intelligent and brilliant beyond compare. His creativity is unimaginable. He is an erotic God and a true hedonist (obviously: He created human sexuality). He is an extremely romantic God (Song of Solomon). He is a divorced God (He begged Israel to be His bride, but when she would not come back to Him, He eventually found another bride, the Church). He is a jealous God (He refuses to share His beloved with another). He is a brokenhearted God who still loves immensely, who longs for fellowship and intimacy, and who sheds tears over needless and foolish rejection.
We don't anthropomorphize God, but at the same time we do not ignore the truth that humanity at its core is the way it is because we are made in the image of God. We are not a perfect image, nor do we live out that image as He intended. But we are based on Him, in some way, so we must see our basic humanity--apart from sin--as pointing to the nature of God. He is ultimate reality, and we are but a shadow, yet a shadowthat points to the substance, the reality, of our Creator.
We revel in how He has revealed Himself, and we connect the dots of how He created us: in His image. How He created men and women in the Garden was a direct reflection of His own personality. We are not arbitrary: we are patterned after the Creator God, and in marvelous ways. Anything good, beautiful, and splendid about our humanness comes because we are children of our Father. Our bodies, spirits, emotions, dreams, desires, and even our heartaches in some way reflect who God is or help us understand what He sees and feels.
We think about and describe God in the ways that reflect who He really is and what He has actually gone through because we want to truly know the God who is. Not the God of religion or liturgy or our cultural background, but the true God who is at this very moment filled with longing and desire and hopes and tears. We are a mere reflection, but a reflection of glory is still in some way glorious, and so we delight in who we are, and we delight in what we are privileged to experience, because in understanding why God designed us the way He did, we understand Him a little better, too.
Being godly--like God--is not just about pursuing righteousness. God is righteous, but He is also passionate, creative, smart, fun, playful, humorous, erotic, sad, angry, jealous, hopeful, etc. To be more godly--like God--we must embrace being like Him in all these ways. Praise God for how He made us!
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