The Christian Instinct, To Yearn For A Visible God, Was Shared by Moses

It is easy to dismiss Christianity, with its many visual icons of a God who temporarily became flesh and blood, as unsophisticated spirituality --- or even base idolatry. Maybe rioting over a Mohammad cartoon is not much better, but one can see why Maimonides ruled that Islam’s refusal to limit the Creator of Space to anything dimensional gave it the loftier philosophical position.

But as one reads Exodus 33 one is startled to see how the one human who had real intimacy with God yearned to know Him (verse 13), and to see God’s “glory.” (Importantly, Moses asks to see no form or shape.) Nonetheless, Moses is asking to see something, and this can help us understand that the Christian is sincerely seeking something more tangible than the “The Great Spirit” of the Plains Indians.

The Greeks and Hellenized Jews are Japhetic, Indo-Europeans, who live for what is YaPHeH (beautiful). And the beautiful is visible, and audible… thus organ music, pomp and circumstance. Catholic architecture is cavernous and sweeping, unlike the sacred geometry of the Semites (as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, before the Arabs claimed Squatters’ Rights).

To their credit the Protestants returned to simplicity and Scripture. But they could not get past the human deity thing. It is discomforting, even frightening for the Christian to contemplate a lofty Creator, beyond time and space. How is such an exalted, transcendent Force supposed to care about my arthritis or crisis at work?

Now if God had a human face that, if the Creator even just for 40 years knew the agonies of being human, then, figures the Christian, there is something to pray to.

Moses does not ask for a face, but God tells Moses that His Face, better rendered “appearance,” can not be seen by a living person (33:20).

The good news derived by this verse is that God’s Appearance CAN be “seen” when we are not alive, and do not have eyes, brains or physical bodies. When we return to the spiritual realm, ONLY THEN can we experience intimacy with our Heavenly Parent.