Stick Figure Theology and God's Big Refrigerator

If you have ever been around families and kitchens, you’ve probably seen them plastered all over the refrigerator.  It’s the pictures kids draw and parents proudly display them on the refrigerator. 

The ones drawn early in a child’s life are well, quite stick figureish.  As the budding artist improves their skills, the pictures change and more detail is filled in.  While beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, few would likely qualify as true masterpieces.  Yet, they are on display, not just to affirm the budding artists, but also because the kids often lovingly create them for their parents.

If a sanctified imagination is possible, perhaps this would fall into that category:  I’m wondering if God doesn’t have some type of big refrigerator in heaven where he puts all the stick figure pictures that His children lovingly draw of Him.  Such pictures might be created as we describe who we think God is or what He does.  Maybe some are painted as we pray and offer a few thoughts to and of the One we are approaching in prayer.   Whether by words or thoughts or actions, we sort of create pictures of Him as we endeavor to formulate and communicate our understanding of what He might be like.  And I’d like to think that He displays them on that big refrigerator of His.  Even more, I’d like to think that He proudly displays them.   

You might smile at my overactive imagination.  In the midst of granting me some latitude on that, you might think that we are way beyond stick figures.  You might even think of the great theologians, both of our generation and of previous ones, and consider their pictures as amazing and on par with the great masterpieces like those of Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt.  But, I’m inclined to think that even our greatest theologians are still, to some degree, doing stick figures.

How so, you might ask?  Allow me to paint a picture with some questions:

How can the finite draw a picture of the infinite?

How can the temporal draw a picture of the eternal?

David, the psalmist, wrote that there are things too great and too marvelous for us to understand (Ps 131).  He seemed to grasp the magnitude of how inadequate our pictures of God really are.

Furthermore, how can anyone accurately paint that which is shrouded in mystery?

To highlight a few mysteries,there is the mystery of the faith (1 Tim 3:9), the mystery of godliness (1 Tim 3:16) and a profound mystery in reference to Christ and the church (Eph 5:32).     

Know that I am not trying to discourage anyone from creating their own “masterpieces” of and for God.  In fact, I actually would want it to continue.  In our love for God, we should keep on painting those stick figure “masterpieces”.  Maybe He’s even proudly displaying them on that big refrigerator of His!