God Looks Like Jesus

God Looks Like Jesus, Gregory A. Boyd & M. Scott Boren. Herald Press (ISBN: 9781513815510) 2025.

Summary: In the life, ministry, teaching, and crucifixion of Jesus, we see the embodiment of what God is like.

Sooner or later, many parents have to answer, first, the question of “Where is God?” and then, often, the question of “What is God like?” This latter question is one many of us grapple with all of our lives, consciously or subconsciously. How we answer that question is vitally important. It shapes not only how we worship but how we live. Some may live under a cloud of guilt while others angrily deny God’s place in their lives because they don’t like what they believe God is like. Yet, still others live in the joyful security and outward facing generosity of believing they are God’s extravagantly loved children.

Gregory A. Boyd and M. Scott Boren advance a simple but profound assertion in this book. God looks like Jesus. If you want to know what God is like, God has definitively revealed himself in his Final Word, Jesus. This Jesus, incredibly, both fully God and man, humbled himself to live under human constraints. This includes the ultimate constraint of death on the cross. Indeed, all of his life was formed by and toward the cross, to bear the sins of a lost humanity. The authors call this cruciform life the “center of the center.” This leads them to propose that we read all of scripture with “cross-tinted glasses.” Thus, they would contend that all of scripture is about an points toward Christ.

But this raises the question of how we deal with scriptures in which God sanctions violence. Part of the answer is that we see in the cross God taking upon God’s self, the Incarnate Son, the violence and evil of the world to reconcile the world to himself. But this doesn’t erase the herem passages from scripture. Commendably, the authors neither rationalize nor try to minimize the actual extent of herem. Rather, they argue that Moses misunderstood God and commanded herem in God’s name. He cites Exodus 23:28-30 and Leviticus 18:24-25 to indicate God’s intent to gradually displace the Canaanites. But God’s non-violent plans were too radical for Moses, who didn’t get it and commanded violent conquest. In the end, God in God’s humility accommodates this. Thus, the authors preserve the loving, humble God revealed in Christ.

To me, this seems a bit of fancy exegetical footwork. It dodges the plain meaning of the texts. I appreciate the effort, because these are among the most troubling texts in scripture and they seem to contradict the portrait of the loving, humble servant God we see in Jesus. Yet, I think this portrait becomes a Procrustean bed that does violence to these violent texts. I continue to wrestle with these texts personally. The best treatment I’ve found is L. Daniel Hawk’s The Violence of the Biblical God (reviewed at: https://bobonbooks.com/2019/08/05/review-the-violence-of-the-biblical-god/). Hawk accepts that God-sanctioned violence is one of the “voices” in scripture and must not be glossed over but which ultimately (as the authors of this work also argue) takes violence upon himself and thus signals its end.

The authors move on from this to discuss the kingdom Jesus proclaims, and how cruciform love shapes it. Enemies are loved and love is extended in broadly inclusionary fashion to all those society, and often the church, would marginalize. They also argue that instead of the classical notions of God’s unchanging nature, the loving God we encounter in Jesus has passions and suffers. Finally, our ultimate hope is in a renewed creation where God does right by all that moves us to exercise God’s love for it in the present.

I found much to commend in this compact book. Especially, I commend the focus on Christ and his cross as central to the gospel message and our rubric for understanding all of scripture. And to understand experientially that the Christ we encounter in scripture reveals the God we may worship joyfully in Spirit and Truth–that is a gift! While I differ in the authors’ attempt at theodicy, I affirm the courage to address the signal objection to their thesis. I would commend Hawk’s approach, not cited by the authors. But above all, for those who struggle with what they think the God they believe in is like, this book cuts through the verbiage and says “look at Jesus and you will see what God is truly like.”

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.