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All those potentials I could actualise maybe? Does God see all the posibilities or who and what I might become?
Does God even have a visible form?
I mean other then when he manifests himself in a certain way.
Or is there even a “normal” way for God to be if he isn’t manifesting himself in one way or another.
What is God’s form?
hmmm… lol
Where as I can probably guess the form I may take in God’s images of me are the snap shots of the times that I have glorified him. Because somehow he manages to throw away and forget about the pictures of me when I am not doing so.
I was tempted to say that he had pictures of the best and worst things I have done, but then I realised it aint so.
Amazing.
I hope, one day, he/she’ll be able to show me the snaps of the many times I forgot the camera…
“… his…” ??? Jon, you old closet conservative!
i love this one……….
Just wow………opening up a million thoughts in my head.
Thanks.
Perhaps (I think someone said this before) you should do a book ‘everyday with asbo’.
I read this and went “ahhhhh” It’s good to remember God loves us even more than I dote on my nephews. I hope they’re good pictures…
How many houses of ‘family photo albums’ do you think God has of us??
This has given me a really nice image of God going through the albums. Looking back at the good times spent with us
scene: a library in heaven, God is smiling as (s)he looks at a large book
“hahaha… ah yes, I remember it well… dear Caroline…. looking so serious and absolutely sure that she’d got me tied down with a doctrine… it was her enthusiasm that I enjoyed… now, where’s that photo album of Jon Birch?…
carrying on from caroline too…
“… ah yes, isn’t mr birch the one who broke my lens?”
pat @ 1… to be honest, i find god utterly unknowable. i know what i experience, what i feel and touch. i have no comprehension of god… too big for me to grasp at all i’m afraid. i do, however, marvel at the terrible (read awesome) vastness of god’s universe.
this year i’ve noticed even more than usual this spring the blossoms and tiny new leaves. i can’t even get my head around that!
… and i don’t altogether trust other’s interpretations of god either… including biblical ones. people are so laden with shonky agendas throughout history and in the present day sadly.
i do trust jesus’ eye on god. so that’s good.
Jon – I was thinking of the potential goods in me that might be actualised and which God might see rather than how I might actualise potentials in God (although I think that’s a possibility to be explored – but probably in a long theological essay
).
I know what you mean about god as unknowable – at least in as much as he is in himself outside of the constraints of time and space. But at the same time, I think God’s presence in the world is continually realised in a variety of ways through what we experience, both in the epiphanies of the natural world and in our encounters and relationships with others. So i think there is a real sense in which what God is in him(her)self, is knowable to us in a way we can comprehend.
And Jesus….yes supremely, I agree.
agreed, pat, in essence… whether i’d call that ‘knowing’ or not i’ll have to think about. i relate to god in my experiencing of things i see and sense around me definitely.
If God is so unknowable…what is the attraction. Not being flippant, just trying to establish what it is that brings us into any level of relationship with that which we call God.
Gods bandwidth must be pretty stable and good to receive uploads of photos like that. Just hope he/she/they/them (just to keep everyone happy) isn’t using mobileMe at the moment.
Well I’d say that ‘knowing’ covers a variety of things, not necessarily information received, processed and recorded in a particular manner (i.e in a consciously cognitive-type event). So, for example the woman in Mark’s gospel who touched Jesus and immediately ‘knew in her body’ that she was healed.
I think we can encounter and ‘know’ God in a wide variety of ways – some of which we do then go on to analyse and articulate in a more intellect- or language-orientated way, some of which we simply ‘can’t’. ..but which we still ‘know’. Years ago, I went to see a Lucien Freud retrospctive at Tate Britain. Standing in front of one of his huge nude canvasses and looking at his stunning depiction of flesh in all its solidity, colour and glory, I had a sudden, intense apprehension of what it might have meant for God (i.e to God) to take on physical form. What that understanding was is not something I have ever been able to articulate or explain (even to myself) – either then or now. Nevertheless it changed (is still changing) me and the way I think about some things. It was a moment of grace and gift – and I would call it ‘knowing God’, even though I can’t possible explain to you what it was all about.
i’ve relayed my thoughts badly. i actually agree with so much of what has been said. i was wrong in stating that i can’t know god… i think what i’m driving at is the whole idea of god, let alone the reality, is so vast and so utterly all encompassing. it’s like as we’ve said before… the more we know the less we know. god defies any of the usual boxes i use to categorise things. that god loves me is central to anything positive i feel as a human. i know god loves me when i see a blossom (sorry to harp on about blossom, but that’s where i’m at right now
), i know god loves me when i take time to appreciate clare and i even knew god loved me after my marriage breakdown and i didn’t love myself. but i think i’m trying to drive at the idea that i can’t make sense of a black hole, so, how can i make sense of that which lies behind it and all other things? i’m not sure i can. god knows me and i know something of god, that which has been revealed and i have chosen to notice…
this is a bad example, but i know of penicillin, i know it will heal me of certain things, i know who discovered it and how, i believe in it as a reality… but i don’t know it like the scientist/chemist does… i don’t really know the what, why or how.
does this make sense? or am i thinking myself in to unnecessary holes? it wouldn’t be the first time.
how do others experience ‘knowing god’?
Looking at this though Jon, maybe what you are really saying is that you don’t know penicillin (=God) as it knows itself – which is different again from how the scientist knows it (and your not knowing it as a scientist knows it doesn’t mean your knowledge is less potent or real)
Or to use another example: you know Clare – you know about her, you know her as a reality – a flesh and blood person; you know your love for her, your relationship with her etc. etc – a myriad things from a shared life. You don’t know her as she is in herself, how she experiences herself or even (in some ways)how she experiences you. Neither do you know her as other peole do – because their knowing is tied up with their own selves and histories. But both you and they know her. But all these scenarios involve real knowledge, even though it takes different forms.
Similarly, we don’t (can’t) know God as God is in Gods-self – but we can know God as we experience him/her, and that knowledge is no less real for being different from God’s knowledge of him/herself, or from another person’s. If that makes sense
yes… yes… pat, that’s exactly what i was stumbling over and trying to say. thanks!
thanks for taking the time to help… it’s great to have said something clumsily, struggling to express myself and be helped through it. brilliant!
Jon
Glad it was some help. I’m right with you on the blossom thing as well: I live in a forest and these last few days, out walking the dog and seeing the ash buds swelling, various blossoms just breaking out and the first great patches of golden-leaved saxifrage and wood anemone down by the beck, has been a tonic for the soul. 
This is what gives me hope. No matter what, God is still crazy about me…
Pat (20)–I’m hopeful that the reverse of that isn’t true. Same as we can’t know a person the way they know themselves, we can’t know God in Gods-self. But I hope (and sense) that I am known by God in myself.
And Jon–I think I get the thing with you and penicillin. I feel the same way about microwaves. I actually think its a pretty apt image for our knowing of God. We can have an experience of things and know about them (I know how long popcorn takes in my microwave to pop), but I don’t really get what behind the microwave.
Just had to put this link! (It’s probably not that relevent, but I was reminded of it…)
‘I don’t understand how television works, but I believe it works, okay?’
(Quote right at the end of a discussion on BBC Breakfast about the atheist bus campaign.)
I wonder how many 12 year olds watching it thought: ‘He doesn’t know how a television works? Those silly Christians…’
I really don’t know how know a television works… I am so pathetic!
Its very simple, Millers – its all gnomes.
Pat and Jon: Yep. Its not just God who is invisible. The things that make people *people*, rather than inanimate lumps of organic matter are all invisible. Sure, we see the effect of those things on a person’s physical body, but we only see the effect. The cause is intangible. I think that it is the same with God. Except that the ‘interface’ between us and God isn’t a human body (not for a couple thousand years, anyhow), so it is harder to notice the effects and thus infer a cause. Most of the effects are incredibly subtle things that we miss or don’t recognise the source of, or incredibly huge and amazing things that we are so used to, we take them completely for granted.
I am trying to learn not to see people in terms of their outward appearance, but in terms of the intangibles that make them who they are. It is hard to do but i think its worth it cos it will help me relate to people better.
The Millars @ 24 – I instinctively want to agree with you and say ‘yes, God knows me completely – in every respect’ but then part of me asks if this is really so. I think God understands me completely..but I’m not sure that this is the same thing
Linus @ 27 – I can see a sense in which ” the ‘interface’ between us and God isn’t a human body (not for a couple thousand years, anyhow),” is right wrt to God having flesh; but surely that interface is also still a human body…..but mine rather than God’s? Or did I get you completely wrong
Hmmm . . . well, not so much as a picture in my head as there is a voice and a presence.
I don’t know what to expect whne I enter eternity with God.
there is a mental picture of Jesus, but not of God.
There is a sort of sense of brightness and comfort of God.
There are some pictures of me that I’d rather not have given God (or anyone else) the opportunity to get pictures of
“God’s You Tube” – what an image!
I guess ‘God’s You Tube’is only accesible to God though Forrest…..fortunately
Like you, I am unable to make any direct visual mental representations of God. I sometimes have an inchoate feeling of ‘this is what God IS’ – but I guess that wouldn’t be something that would make a lot of sense if I tried to verbalise it
A rather belated rejoinder to Jon’s comment @19
Reading Timothy Radcliffe’s (wonderful) book ‘Why go to church?’ this morning, I came across this quote from the Dominican Herbert McCabe:
“There are some pictures of me that I’d rather not have given God (or anyone else) the opportunity to get pictures of.” hmmmmm… sobering thought, forrest.
mr mccabe makes a good point, pat.
Does God get the photo of me when I was really fat and looked like the side of a house? ……… or when I became really thin? Or now that I have some extra fat………. or later when I am a bit thinner again?
….And which of those forms will your resurrection body take?
Svelt 17 year old with all of my hair I hope!
I have a photo of me then that I really like. Haven’t changed much except the weight and crows feet…..
i love my crows feet!
Robb – how could you possibly have crow’s feet at your tender age?
MInd you, I’m not surprised to hear you’ve got some Jon 
They’re give one’s face ‘character’ don’t they….at least that’s what I tell myself 
…just realised smileys don’t have ‘em though – they all look like they’ve been botoxed! What we need is a smiley for those ‘I feel saggy and middle-aged’ moments….
Smilies are what caused my crows feet. Miserable people develop jowles (sp?) and smiley people develop crows feet.
Be careful with them smilies!!
Pat: An analogy. You’re playing a computer game. It’s a multiplayer game. You use a controller to move a character around on the screen. Other players do the same thing. Now, the controller and the character on the screen are interfaces through which you relate to and interact with the other people playing the game. But no-one believes the characters on the screen are the other players – they are just the interface. Now imagine the game is called life and the characters on the screen are our physical bodies. Actually, the real “us” – our conciousness, for want of a better word – is a step back from that.
Now consider the game designer. What relationship do the players have to the one who creates the world their characters-on-the-screen inhabit? What can they learn about the designer from the game’s design?
Now imagine what would happen if the designer picked up a controller and started playing a character in the game.
(disclaimer: i know the analogy breaks down for you because it implies pre-existing souls floating around and then joining the “game” – for clarity, that’s not something i mean to imply)
“The whole of our faith is the belief that God loves us”
Well, yes, as long as we understand that love is tough as nails. Works both ways, as well: “Love the Lord your God with all your Heart and Soul and Mind, and Love your neighbour like you love yourself”
Ok linus – I will have to go away and think about your analogy.
Re your comment @ 40, I don’t think either of these issues would have been unconsidered by Herbert McCabe in making that comment.
Linus – apologies for this somewhat belated response to your analogy @ 39. I had to think about this for a bit because (
) I’m completely inept at this sort of computer game and thus never play them. So – I may have entirely missed the point here 
If I have – apols.
I take what you are saying about the controls and the avatars being the ‘interfaces’ through which the game is conducted. However, I guess my response would be that since, (as you point out)these don’t have actual cognitive capacities of their own (they cannot will or experience anything, they cannot do anything independently of me or whoever else wields them), then at the end of the day, the locus of any interaction between me and another player, the real interface, if you like, is still the human body.
Any interaction I have with the designer of the game – either in an abstract sense or more concretely if the designer themselves enters the game through an avatar must similarly be located within my own cognitive centre.
I would say the same is true of our ‘interface’ with God – whether in the actual physical reality of Christ (for those who were alive then) or in the other ways in the world before or after the finite physical stage of the incarnation: The locus must be the experiencing human body – because that is what we are/have. Even if that interaction occurs in a non-material form – between God’s and my consciousness – then for me myself, that must ultimately still be located (at least in some sense – I have to be careful here because I’m not a reductionist but expressing it like this makes me sound perilously like one
)in my humann body.
Does that make sense – or did I (more than likely I fear
) miss the point of your analogy?