The Challenge of Writing about God

The challenge that any theology constantly runs into is how to communicate about God. He's kind of a large topic and human words are always ultimately inadequate for the task. I have been wracking my brain the past week trying to make a final draft of a video to introduce God the Father, and I find it quite difficult. I find it difficult because it is too easy to simply boil speech about God down to abstractions. Saying, God is loving, God is eternal, God is omnipotent, God is this, God is that, might be speaking 'accurately' but it becomes very cold and disconnected from who God actually is and what God actually does.

Throughout history God has made himself known to us by his actions and it is only in recounting these actions that we reason out what 'attributes' God must have and so we put names on Him, categorizing Him to fit into our modes of thinking. The human mind needs categories to understand what something is but often times these attributes and categories replace our speech of who God has revealed himself to be. I want to avoid this. I want to talk about what God has done, but I only have two minutes of video and recounting the entire history of Scripture (or of the universe) takes a little longer than that.

Then, of course, there's also the mode of speech to consider. Do I want to speak historically, philosophically, or relationally? Well, historically is long and boring, philosophically is abstract and often hard to understand, but relationally... I think this is how God has always communicated with us so I will speak relationally about God. What does it mean to speak relationally? It means going out to meet the other person and converse like friends, speaking almost casually, in a way that you know the other person will understand and not getting bogged down with absolute precision (historical or abstract).

But of course, I must be precise too! I must be 100% accurate in my speech about God even if it is speaking relationally. It is too easy to create a false metaphor or analogy. It is too easy to misconstrue the nature of God with idle speech. The key is being precise and speaking relationally.

I need to stay away from thick words that the average person wouldn't understand (like Transubstantiation for instance) as well as phrases that a non-Christian would be confused by (like 'being washed in the blood'). I need to somehow introduce my God, explain who He is, what He is like, in two minutes without falling back on just naming off his attributes. This is a worthy challenge if ever there was one.