No pictures allowed

To be honest I'm already pretty sick of my little series, but I should learn to be committed to something, and obviously I need a little practice to do so. So let's talk about the second commandment.

"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousands of generations of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20, 4-6)

So in order to talk about this properly I will divide the verses. First you shall not make yourself an idol. I guess this applies as well to any kind of imaginary picture, at least that's what I was thought as a kid. The thing is, as soon as I hear those words I can see how God is portrayed in the Simpsons, an old man, long beard, but you can never see his face. I guess most of us see God as some kind of old man, as he is revered to as 'the father' in the bible. In fact, God doesn't have a gender, he is genderless and by having images we limit his possibilities to be more than just a human being. There is this book called 'The shack' by William P. Young in which God looks like the typical Gospel singer, a not very slim black lady. In another, he is a 17th century English woman. I guess that has shaken up the image a little. On the other hand I get where those wrong pictures come from, I mean it says in Genesis 1, 26-27: "Then God said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God who created him; male and female he created them". The question that comes to my mind is, did he create man physically like him or mentally/ emotionally. As human beings it's difficult for us to accept that certain things we cannot understand. We want to know how God looks like, even though we can't get it right anyway.

I really like how the Arabians have solved the problem. They don't have pictures of any humans in their mosque, just flowers and ornaments. Essentially I think they won't give you any room for wrong inner idols, unlike the old masters who draw Jesus and Moses in their paintings.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the past when God admits to be jealous. I mean that's what I'm talking about when wondering if we are emotionally made after him, as seems to be having feelings. He is jealous, get's sad or happy, and shows love. He is definitely having those emotions in a greater range than we do, but still, I can see how we connect. Plus I want to add, and correct me if I'm wrong, that through Jesus' blood we can get set free of God's anger punishing our children and up until the fourth generation. He died for our sins, so we can escape our parent's mistakes.

Cheerio