When the Elephant Talks

by Dave Wilkinson

Colossians 1:3

January 19, 2003

Let me tell you about my friend Jim’s Dad.

He was the most gentle guy in the world. He beat his wife and kids. He had a great job and made lots of money. They never had food to eat or clothes to wear. He hated traveling and joyfully drove everywhere in his beloved Mustang convertible.

He was a committed pacifist who taught hand to hand combat and knife fighting to the Marines. He left home when my friend was three and was always there for him.

Did you note any inconsistencies in what I said about this man? Did you, perhaps, wonder if I wasn’t talking about two completely different people?

Well my mixed up account of Jim’s dad is no different than what we hear about God. We hear that God is love and we also hear that God rewards terrorists with harems in the afterlife. We hear that God is opposed to women in ministry and we hear that He is actually she. We hear that God is involved in His creation and we also hear that He wound up the universe like a big clock and left it alone a long time ago.

Like my statements about my friend’s dad, all these statements about who God is and what God does can’t be true. They simply cancel each other out. If one statement is factual, the others must be false.

Some people don’t like that. They have a hard time grasping the fact that opposite claims cannot be true at the same time. Or maybe they don’t understand because that don’t want to understand. Like many Americans they think that tolerance is the highest of all virtues -- even if it costs you your brain.

For example, a recent poll by the George Barna Research Organization reveals that 75% of Americans believe that God is a Trinity--that there is one God who reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At the same time 44% think the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon express the same spiritual truths.

But hold on! Think about it! Not all these claims can be factual. If God is a Trinity then the Koran which denies the Trinity must be false. So must Mormonism, at least as taught by Joseph Smith Jr., for Joseph Smith denied the reality of the Holy Spirit. There are at a minimum, 19% of Americans who are trying to have it both ways -- or who have no idea what they are talking about.. If one claim is true, the other must be false.

But what about the elephant?

When it comes to the question of knowing the truth about God, we’ve all heard the ancient fable of six blind men who visit the palace of the Rajah and encounter an elephant for the first time.

The first blind man puts out his hand and touches the side of the elephant. “How smooth! An elephant is like a wall.” The second blind man touches the trunk of the elephant. “How round! An elephant is like a snake.” The third blind man touches the tusk. “How sharp! An elephant is like a spear.” The fourth blind man puts out his hand and touches the leg of the elephant. “How tall! An elephant is like a tree.” The fifth blind man reaches out his hand and touches the ear. “How wide! An elephant is like a fan.” The sixth blind man touches the tail. “How thin! An elephant is like a rope.”

An argument breaks out. Each blind man thinks his own perception of the elephant is correct. The Rajah, awakened by the commotion, calls out from the balcony. “The elephant is big Each man touched only one part. You must put all parts together to find out what an elephant is like.”

This fable is often used to teach that every faith represents just one part of a larger truth about God. Each has only a piece of the truth, leading to God by a different routes. Each blind man is right according to his own point of view -- for the true elephant is all those things.

But of course not even this means that every possible statement about God is true. We’re going to get a little philosophical here. Hold on!

Suppose there’s a seventh blind man in the courtyard. This one has no real experience with the elephant. He is afraid to get close. But he joins the discussion anyway and since everyone is blind, no one knows that he was standing over by the wall the whole time. He says that when he felt the elephant it was a large furry beast with sharp fangs and a drooling mouth.

So how will the blind men know what to believe and what not to believe? One thing they can do is to continue to interact with the elephant, to experience it in new ways, and to share their experiences. And after a while they will figure out that fur, fangs, and a drooling mouth don’t fit with the other things they have learned -- and that whole the elephant is big, it isn’t a tiger.

The other way they can find out is simply to ask the Rajah- - because unlike them, the Rajah can see. The Rajah has a privileged access to the truth. And because he can see clearly, he is able to correct those who were blind. It is interesting that even in the parable, there is still one who knows that whole truth and shares it with the others -- and that there is still an objective truth about elephantness that is outside of personal opinions.

But now, suppose something else. What if the elephant speaks for himself? What if the elephant gets tired of being poked and prodded by blind men? What if the elephant wants people to stop guessing and know him as he is? What if the elephant says, “This is what I am like”? Or, better yet, what if the elephant gives each blind seeker a smaller version of himself — one they can hold in their hands so they can get to know each aspect of “elephantness” at the same moment — in a way, that, in spite of their blindness, they can understand?

Christianity claims that human beings don’t learn about God by groping. Instead, discovery comes about through God’s own self-revelation. He is not silent, leaving us to guess about His nature after we’ve poked and prodded and compared notes. God tells us what He is like and what He wants.

In fact, in Jesus, God says “Here is who I am. Jesus is the model that’s your size that you can hold. Anything that doesn’t fit this is wrong. People who tells you stuff about Me that doesn’t fit who Jesus is are touching something, but they are not touching Me.”

Christians reject pluralism because the defining elements of different religions contradict each other. It’s not a problem of discovery; it’s a problem of coherence. Contradictory claims can’t be simultaneously true. Just because we have freedom of speech doesn’t mean that all opinions hold water. And just because we have freedom of religion doesn’t mean that all religions are true. It’s just that you are free to be wrong.

But that doesn’t mean that many people don’t want to believe in opposites anyway. They do. And that includes many people who call themselves Christians.

It’s not just other places. It’s here too. In the congregational survey we completed last April, one of the questions was whether or not we agreed with the statement that “All the different religions are equally good ways of helping a person find ultimate truth.” Thirty five percent of the people who completed the survey said that they either agreed with the statement or were neutral or unsure.

This is one of the main reason I am preaching through Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. Colossians is perhaps the best place to turn in the Bible for helping us get our heads straight about who God is and How He has revealed Himself to us. The reason that is vital is because we will never know true hope until we know the true God. Fuzzy theology will drag you down. But a clear focus on who God really is--and what He has done for you--will bring you life.

In Colossians 1:15, Paul writes that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God.” We’ll talk about this verse in detail later. But in the short version, Jesus is “God in human terms”. Using the analogy of the elephant who speaks, Jesus is the smaller version -- the one we can hold in our hands so we can get to know each aspect of “God” at the same moment, In Jesus, God breaks through our blindness so we can understand. God points to Jesus and says, “Any idea about me that doesn’t fit Jesus” is wrong -- no matter how many people believe it, no matter how “nice” they are, or no matter how “nice” you want to be by being able to say “you’re right too.”

It’s not just Paul. Jesus made the same claim.

When the disciple Philip asked to see the Father, Jesus responded in John 14:9, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” Jesus is saying, “Do you want to see God? Then look at me. God is standing right in front of you.”

Jesus claims to be God in human flesh. He claims to be the only way. This means that we had better sit up and pay attention when Jesus tells us who God is.

And what does Jesus, with His exclusive truth, exclusive representation and exclusive access, tell us about who God is?

Here is the good news of the good news. Here is where we finally get to our text. Jesus says, “God is a Father.” This is why Paul writes in Colossians 1:3 that he gives thanks for the Colossian Christians to the God who is the Father.

What kind of Father is God? He is not an angry, punitive judge. He’s just like Jesus--the One who brought a healing touch to so many, the One who delivered truth in a package of love, the One who showed a compassion and inclusiveness that gave a whole new understanding of the character of God -- the One who longs to be called Abba--Daddy!--the One who sacrificially gave of Himself so that His people can be whole. He is the Father who cares for us with the tenderness of a mother.

J.I. Packer writes in Knowing God, “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.

Now Scripture describes God in many different ways. These complement one another, because no description can contain God. Most personal of these descriptions is the tenderhearted parent, like the father who reaches out to embrace his returning son (Luke 15:20), or like the mother who won’t abandon the baby at her breast (Isaiah 49:15). If we throw away the biblical portrait of God as Father, we seriously misunderstand the reality of God. Because when we describe God as Father, we do not mean it as in contrast with a mother. Instead, we mean it as in contrast with the idea of God as some impersonal force of nature. For above all, Jesus shows us that God is personal. He cares for us personally.

Of course there is a down side to God being personal. He just might want to get personal with you and me. A personal God is not a safe God.

In a brilliant section in his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis exposed the bogus appeal of the impersonal God.

He writes: “Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at his glance.

“Above all, this impersonal God will not make any demands on you. That is why it can be such a shock to realize that God is not just an idea or an ideal. He is a person who wants to be in relationship with us.”

Lewis writes: “It is always shocking to meet life where we though we were alone. ‘Look out!’ we cry, ‘it’s alive.’ And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back — I would have done so myself if I could — and proceed no further with Christianity. An impersonal God” — well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads — better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap--best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, King, husband — that is quite another matter. Here comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“man’s search for God”) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?”

But the less demanding and personal God is, the more boring he will be. One doesn’t pray to a God like that, one meditates -- and except for an elite few, one loses interest and falls asleep. An abstract, boring God is finally a shrunken God, too big and therefore too busy, we think, to get involved with people. But the God Jesus told us to pray to can both run the cosmos and knit a baby together in his mother’s womb. He can number both subatomic particles and the hairs on your head. With some of us He has to keep changing the count. But He can do that.

In Victor Hugo’s great novel, Les Misérables, Jean Valjean has been caring for a destitute woman. He finds that the woman, in desperation, had boarded her little girl, Cosette, with the owners of a country inn. They turn out to be mean spirited people who exploit her as a servant, but the poor mother had no other options. Now, on her deathbed, the mother makes Valjean promise to care for Cosette.

Valjean goes to get the child, and he doesn’t let the manipulative innkeeper stop him from buying back the forlorn little girl. The innkeeper senses a strong resolve on the part of Jean Valjean that won’t be deterred, just as a demon senses when it is in “the presence of a higher god.” The good man prevailed. Early the next morning, two dark figures could be seen making their way down the country road, away from the inn, a strong man holding the hand of the little girl. In her other hand she clutched a new doll. And she looked up toward the face of the stranger who was her savior, feeling like she was walking with God.

That’s appropriate. For Valjean is a symbol for the God who not only has bought our salvation, but who commits to caring for us. This is the God whom we call Father.

Not all roads lead there. Not all religions teach this. God is not anything we want Him to be. But He is who we need Him to be.

And this is the God we will come to know better and better as we journey together through this letter to the Colossians.