What does God look like?

ShiningBecky · Feb 17, 2012

ElijahW said:
Really? What is the alternative? Should we understand God how it is presented on television, as a person? Or is there a particular physical form he should be imagined to be, if not like a human?

I'm not following.

I'd like to know how something being spirit means it is "nothing". Spirit clearly has an appearance. What, you think you're going to die and see nothing?

razeontherock · Feb 17, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
Spirit clearly has an appearance.

What? And what do you base that on?

ShiningBecky · Feb 17, 2012

razeontherock said:
What? And what do you base that on?

Visions, people I know's stories, countless NDEs and the fact that I have seen them. There is plenty of proof out there, if you're looking for it.

It's weird how for a so-called christian site, there are so many hard-nosed skeptics who believe in basically nothing, but their religious book. "If I can't find it in clear, basic english in my Bible, I won't believe it!!" A lot of that around here.

razeontherock · Feb 17, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
Visions, people I know's stories, countless NDEs and the fact that I have seen them. There is plenty of proof out there, if you're looking for it.

I've had lots of visions, but that doesn't mean that my physical eyes can perceive G-d Himself, nor that there is anything for them to perceive. I mean, if He's truly everywhere, how would that work? I think it might be bad for traffic ...

unique101 · Feb 17, 2012

Do you need to visualise God in a physical form to believe in HIM ?
Suppose if that was not possible would you still appreciate HIS existence and believe in HIM because you see HIS signs around you and within you?
Others believe and worship men like Buddha, his teachings are the same - love - how is that ?
What was the religion and who was the saviour before Jesus was born?
What will be the account of those who came before Jesus?

Seeker of The Truth

Theofane · Feb 17, 2012

lucaspa said:
We are answering the question. In order to "look like" something, God would have to be either physical or energy. After all, we know what light looks like. Since God is not physical, God either 1) doesn't look like anything or 2) God can look like anything He wants to. God has the power to assume the likeness of anything in the physical universe. Thus we have the Burning Bush in Exodus.

So, God does not "look like" anything. Sometimes people have found it convenient to portray God as an elderly white man with a beard. However, that is not to say that God really looks like that. Shoot, I have stick models I used to show what molecules "look like", but that doesn't mean the molecules really look like that. It's just a representation for convenience.

Yes, a placeholder!

Just like every artist's rendering of Jesus in every painting you've ever seen.

ShiningBecky · Feb 17, 2012

razeontherock said:
I've had lots of visions, but that doesn't mean that my physical eyes can perceive G-d Himself, nor that there is anything for them to perceive. I mean, if He's truly everywhere, how would that work? I think it might be bad for traffic ...

Maybe "clearly" was the wrong word. Obviously not everybody sees these things, but to deny that anyone does is also false. Many people can see beyond the veil of this realm, whether or not religiously minded, or otherwise, folks want to believe that is up to them.

ShiningBecky · Feb 17, 2012

unique101 said:
Do you need to visualise God in a physical form to believe in HIM ?
Suppose if that was not possible would you still appreciate HIS existence and believe in HIM because you see HIS signs around you and within you?
Others believe and worship men like Buddha, his teachings are the same - love - how is that ?
What was the religion and who was the saviour before Jesus was born?
What will be the account of those who came before Jesus?

Seeker of The Truth

This topic isn't about a physical form.

To confuse the idea of a spirit as something that cannot be seen, even in the spirit realm, is quite odd. If we're discussing God here, we're obviously using spiritual lingo and terms, not natural ones. Is everyone around here this carnal???

ElijahW · Feb 17, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
I'm not following.

I'd like to know how something being spirit means it is "nothing". Spirit clearly has an appearance. What, you think you're going to die and see nothing?

Ok, you are correct about spirit being perceptible to the mind. All the thoughts you think, including the ones speaking in your voice, are considered real in a spiritual sense. The ideas aren’t something that are just mental constructs but something that is real, that the soul can perceive. God, while spiritual, is considered distinct from the other spiritual elements, since he is considered the source of all the spiritual elements. So any idea that we perceive in the mind, while real, is different from the actual spiritual entity that we would label God. This renders God unknowable, which is why Paul is pointing at that unknown God in Acts and says that we have come to be known by God, instead of knowing God.

Love would be an example of a spiritual entity that can look like nothing, other than a label we apply to what we like, or it could be seen as a real spiritual force and what we label “love” isn’t just subjective but us recognizing that actual force at work in the world.

Yes, I believe I will see nothing when I die. That’s why Christians often hope for the Resurrection of the Dead, so we get to live again because life as we understand it would be impossible without the spacial temporal aspects of a purely spiritual life.

apache1 · Feb 17, 2012

I seriously doubt he looks like Charleton Heston, George Burns, or Richard Pryor!

Faulty · Feb 17, 2012

ViaCrucis said:
That of course is a visionary description of the glorified God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ. Not a description of what God in His essence looks like, or what our Lord physically in His humanity looks like.

-CryptoLutheran

And yet it's the most recent description we have. Everything else if just useless guessing that just wastes time.

day time · Feb 18, 2012

I don't believe that I've seen "God" …. at least, no physical entity or thing has ever identified itself and said, "I'm God" to me that i could distinguish as being unique from anything else. I have wanted desperately to meet God "face to face" though.

However, I believe I've seen a glimpse of one of the "realms" that perhaps God is a part of which we do not typically experience directly …. and this was not in vision, or my "mind" …. or anything like that. It was in "reality" … in front of me, effecting me physically.

It was a bright light that flashed before me, above me …. and in the moments it was there, it was like a curtain was being pulled back and nothing but pure light/energy was shining through it. There was nothing I could make out shape wise, but the light and bright flash was the main feature …. again, as though it was being "let through" from this curtain like thing being pulled back. It was like the fabric of reality was torn in a place for a moment.

There was nothing peaceful about this whatsoever. I began to basically convulse immediately, and I can only describe how I felt: it felt as though my body were being turned inside out, and that had it been anymore "powerful" … this veil tearing …. I would have been turned inside out fundamentally and "crushed".

This wasn't that long ago …. and I equated the feelings with pure terror. Now …. I've been in dangerous situations, all over the world. When I say "terror", I'm not talking fear of stepping on a land mine, or having my face blown off. Those involve fear …. terror was like, beyond anything I could imagine, and having this feeling of utterly abstract negation. As though I would not be able to handle more than a few moments of that without being turned inside out, compressed, and then shredded into a singularity lol. It's as though in order to "cross over" … that is what needed to take place, and that brought me "terror".

The reason I equate that experience with "God" on some level is because of what was happening with a friend of mine at the time, and something I knew that had happened to another person I knew who had similar experiences, that directly related to it …. which I'll skip the details of for brevity and heresy's sake lol.

I don't think that was "God" …. however, I believed I got a glimpse, in waking reality …. of "the other side". Visions, dreams, seeing things manifest in certain ways ….. even seeing beings whom I might call "Supernatural" … did not compare to this. This was "otherworldly" and I have no point of relation to it other than itself. Perhaps this is an aspect of *seeing Spirit* from a "spiritual" dimension, manifest into this reality in a stark, naked way. Something about that told me that to see God, face to face in "the raw" … would involve something akin to that experience, and that my physical body would have to be protected somehow. Otherwise, perhaps God using "things" and footprints, so to speak, to communicate was the "safest" way, most of the time. Within a person, within a "bush", within experience and creation … otherwise, to look directly at God's foot, as it were, and not just His footprint …. I might die unless certain precautions were taken.

It's almost as though it would mean the destruction of aspects of my immediate reality or something on some level, for God to be "in the raw" in certain ways ….. as though to pass into that dimension I would have to be physically destroyed at this point in time :~(

This was all interesting to me, as I recognize the overwhelming presence much differently. The presence seems more "clothed" …. as though it were covered with an invisible blanket. This wasn't clothed, and it was horrific.

unique101 · Feb 18, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
This topic isn't about a physical form.

To confuse the idea of a spirit as something that cannot be seen, even in the spirit realm, is quite odd. If we're discussing God here, we're obviously using spiritual lingo and terms, not natural ones. Is everyone around here this carnal???[/quote

What if we say that our mind and intellectual capacity cannot comprehend this issue of spirit and it is not for us to know the how, where, when, what but merely to aknowledge the existense of it?

What impact will this (not having all the info. related to issue of spirit) have on our spiritual life/development?

lucaspa · Feb 21, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
That's out of left field. I don't know where you're getting that from!!!

We are getting that partly from scripture and partly from reason. The Old Testament Hebrews were quite clear that they could not make any "graven image" of God. Why not? Because Yahweh did not have any physical appearance! Yahweh was not like the gods of the neighboring religions, all of whom had physical shapes. For instance, Horus had the head of a bird and the body of a man. Marduk looked human. Yahweh's lack of physical representation was part of His revelation to people. One instance is in the 10 Commandments. IF God "looked like" something, then He could have said so and permitted the Hebrews to make an image. But instead God specifically forbade any image.

The closest anyone comes to "seeing" God in the Old Testament is Moses seeing the Burning Bush. But no one thought God was actually a burning bush that did not consume itself.

ViaCrucis has quoted a vision from Revelations. First, it's not clear that what the author wrote is actually what the author "saw". Revelations is in code to get it past the censors. So the "visions" may not be real. Second, a vision is like a painting or the stick models of molecules -- a representation for the human mind to wrap around. Not necessarily the reality.

Orthodox -- standard -- Christianity has it that God does is not physical, therefore does not "look like" anything.

lucaspa · Feb 21, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
Visions, people I know's stories, countless NDEs and the fact that I have seen them. There is plenty of proof out there, if you're looking for it.

What do you mean by "seen them"? Ghosts? Disembodied people?

Are you thinking that the "them" you've seen is equivalent to God?

What's more, what have you "seen"? What did "them" look like? Did they look like the people they were in life? For instance, were they dressed?

It's weird how for a so-called christian site, there are so many hard-nosed skeptics who believe in basically nothing, but their religious book. "If I can't find it in clear, basic english in my Bible, I won't believe it!!" A lot of that around here.

The ones you are complaining about -- such as me -- haven't done that. What's more, we also using logic and reason in addition to scripture. Remember, Becky, that "God" is a being that is outside our physical universe (It created that universe, after all) but we are creatures of the physical universe. What we "see" depends on what either comes in our optic nerves or what stimulates that part of the brain that interprets what comes in thru our optic nerves. For instance, you dream, right? You "see" things in your dreams, but that seeing does not come from photons striking the retina in your eye. It comes from the firing of neurons in your brain that are also fired by signals coming from the retina.

Since God is outside the universe, why would God have a shape/form of something inside the universe? Specifically, why would God have the form of a modified ape that arose after 3.8 billion years of contingent evolution? That would be very weird. Now, can God stimulate the neurons inside our brains (analogous to neurons stimulated in dreams) to have us "see" a human form? Sure. But that does not mean God really has such a form, does it? Or God can project the photons which correspond to a physical object, i.e a burning bush. Again, doesn't mean God actually is a burning bush.

It seems that you are stuck in the narrow perceptions of humanity and can't imagine anything not "looking like" something in the physical universe.

lucaspa · Feb 21, 2012

ShiningBecky said:
This topic isn't about a physical form.

Sure it is. When you said "look like", you put us into physical form. What else but some physical shape did you expect as a response? If we had said "looks like spirit", wouldn't you then have asked us, in reference to a physical form, what spirit looks like?

You have said people have seen the spiritual realm. But, if so, what are the reports? Don't those reports give a "looks like" in terms of the physical realm? NDEs certainly do! They describe "tunnels" (physical form) and "bright light" (physical form)! Sometimes NDEs describe vision of physical forms from a perspective other than in their body. A common one is of "hovering over" their own body. But that "hovering" is still a description within the physical universe!

To confuse the idea of a spirit as something that cannot be seen, even in the spirit realm, is quite odd.

Not really. To be "seen", we need photons. Does a spirit emit or reflect photons? Does the spirit world have a physical reality?

If we're discussing God here, we're obviously using spiritual lingo and terms, not natural ones.

LOL! But what "spiritual terms" do we have for appearance that is not physical? NONE. That's why you said "look like". That means you are referring something you "saw" in the spiritual realm as similar to what we perceive in the physical realm.

Did you ever watch Star Trek Voyager? There are a couple of episodes where Q tries to "show" the crew of Voyager the Q Continuum. In every case, Q does so in terms of the physical universe the humans know. In one episode the Q Continuum is depicted as a gas station/convenience mart alone on a dusty, desert highway. In another case, a civil war in the Q Continuum is depicted in terms of the American Civil War. The Q Continuum -- the spiritual realm -- cannot be viewed as it really is, but only in analogies to the physical universe.

InSpiritInTruth · Feb 21, 2012

1 Timothy 6:16
Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

The best physical description of God is a blinding Light.

day time · Feb 21, 2012

InSpiritInTruth said:
1 Timothy 6:16
Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

The best physical description of God is a blinding Light.

I always find it interesting when my own experience (or anyones for that matter) matches up with something in the scriptures, which I wasn't even cognisant was there (in the scriptures) in the first place.

razeontherock · Feb 21, 2012

day time said:
I always find it interesting when my own experience (or anyones for that matter) matches up with something in the scriptures, which I wasn't even cognisant was there (in the scriptures) in the first place.

This is but one more way we know the Scriptures are - for realz

Hbr 12:1 "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith"

All of heaven and earth is part of that "cloud," but to start thinking in terms of "that's what God looks like," is to flirt with pantheism. OTOH He does say He wears all this, the way we wear clothes. And that He'll change it all, like we change clothes. I find that particular word picture fascinating ...

"And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: (Hebrews 1:11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."

thomhughes · Feb 21, 2012

Reckon He looks like a bearded Bill Murray.

I'd be happy with that.

What does God look like?

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