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“If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”
The guest speaker at my church last week declared these words from the stage. Then he asked if our lives so conformed to Biblical principle, so reflected Jesus Christ, so yielded to the Spirit which dwells in us, that people could see the reality of God through our lives.
Wow. Will I ever be able to say, “If you see me- the way I live, the words I speak, the way I treat others, will you see the reality of God?” Will I ever be that conformed to His image? I sure do hope so! I’ve given Him permission to take me there, ‘cause I sure cannot do it myself.
As I meditated on these questions, I remembered a post I wrote on my own blog called: Bad Words and Good Words. I wrote: “Writers everywhere know that we have the power to influence minds. The question is do we influence minds for good or for evil?”
I’ve had this discussion around musicians and songwriters. Many don’t want the label “Christian artist” because of the restrictions they believe it puts on them. They’d rather just be artists who happen to be Christian and allow their art form, in this case music, to have no lyrical or genre limitations.
Personally, the reminders that I am to follow Christ, abide in His Word, and be salt and light challenged me to consider all the aspects of my life, even my creativity. I cannot compartmentalize my personal life from my vocational life as a writer. Therefore His light must shine through my books. I want to be able to say, “If you read my books, you read books God would have written.”
Some may wince at this statement, but consider this: The Bible has all sorts of stories with all sorts of ratings. However, they all have one thing in common- they reflect the opinion of God on a subject. Consider the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. Paragraphs in this poetic book would make some of you blush. There are underlying meanings to certain passages that would be given an R rating
according to our standards today. Are the passages ungodly? Certainly not. They reflect God’s opinion on intimacy within the bounds of marriage between the man, the Beloved and his wife, the Shulamite. The book also reflects how the Church as the Bride of Christ ravishes and delights the heart of Jesus Christ.
Consider the story of Moses and Pharaoh. The plagues that came upon Egypt may seem like a horror film to some. The Old Testament is full of graphic stories of murder, rape, and incest. These situations are generally referenced as opposed to being described in visual detail, and they all do one thing: reflect the opinion of God that the evil are punished and those that follow Him are blessed.
The New Testament has stories which reference sorcerers, thieves and prostitutes. I use the word “reference” on purpose. Since God does not detail certain subjects in His word for the purpose of visualization, my opinion is that neither should I. This one thing I know about how God wrote the Bible. Each of these New Testament stories shows the power of God to defeat His enemies or the grace of God to save the repentant soul.
I want people to see the reality of God in my life and through my books. Here is a song that echos that desire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOg-1JjAdGk Fellow writers, give me your two cents.
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