What one thing powerfully limits your relationships, your connection with God, even yourself? This does.

My dad watches Fox News, a lot.   He also voted for our current President.  He might do it again.   When you hear those two facts, you might be surprised to learn he worked to help poor factory workers while he went to college; that he risked his own job to integrate the church he served in Tennessee.  Or you might find those facts not surprising at all, thank you very much.  

But today, when folks hear someone voted for this candidate or that candidate, many assume they know what that means.   But they don’t.  If someone voted for this candidate, do you know what that tells you?  It tells you that they voted for that candidate.  Period.  But people make lots of assumptions based on that one action.  In other words, people pigeonhole.   And who likes to be pigeonholed?   I don’t. 

It bugs me when people assume that because I serve as pastor at a church, I’m going to act a certain way.   I love it when someone says, “You don’t act like a pastor type at all.”   I don’t want to be a pastor type.   Heck, I don’t know of a pastor that does. 

Do you like someone pigeon-holing you?  Doesn’t it bug you when someone categorizes you with some label?    But it’s more than irritating, it’s wrong.   We’re too complex for that. Heck, even dogs or cats are too complex for that, even pigeons.    

Yet we still find ourselves doing it.   If someone cuts me off in traffic, my pigeonhole comes out.  What a rude and selfish guy!   But do I know that?  No.  He could have just not seen me or even be rushing his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby.   And even if he was being rude, is that the whole story?  Does that driver always fit in that particular pigeonhole because he acted that way on that day?  I doubt it.        

But forget the random stranger on the road, you can pigeon-hole the people closest to you.  You assume (because you know them so well) how they will react to something.   But then you turn out to be wrong.   And that can get you into big trouble.  And even if you’re right on that occasion, it doesn’t mean you always will be.  Nobody fits in the pigeon-hole, ever.     

But right now, pigeonholing has become so rampant, it’s tearing our nation apart.  And too often, people pigeonhole their way right out of marriages and friendships.   They limit their lives because of the limits they’ve assumed about others, even about themselves.   But ultimately all this pigeonholing goes deeper to the ultimate pigeonhole.  And this pigeonhole messes up your life like no other.  It messes up hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives right now. And it could mess them up for generations.   What pigeonhole can do that?  More crucially, how do you avoid falling into it.   In these words, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Deuteronomy 5:8-10

When you’re going through the Ten Commandments, this commandment can puzzle you.  Didn’t God just talk about no other gods before me in commandment number one?  So, why does God go there again?  Did God lose track? 

But God isn’t repeating himself.  God is making a whole different point.    God isn’t saying. “Don’t make images of other gods.”  God did cover that in the first commandment. No.  God is saying.  “Don’t engrave any images of me.” 

When God said that, God went against every religion, human beings had ever known.   In religion, graven images is what you did.  You’ve gotta have an image.  That tells you who this god is.   This good looks like a man or woman or some sort of animal.   This god takes care of the sun or the moon.  But God says, don’t do that.  Don’t represent me at all.    

But why?  Why does God hate images so much?  Why does God want the Israelites to go against everything that religion has always meant?  It’s simple.

God is saying.  Don’t pigeonhole me.  That’s what religion does.  It pigeonholes.  And God doesn’t want to be pigeonholed.  God doesn’t want to be pigeonholed for the same reason you don’t want to be.  It’s not just irritating.  It’s wrong.  If you can’t be labeled like that, certainly God can’t.  God is saying, don’t limit me.  Don’t define me to some god category.   And when you make images, that’s what happens.  So, don’t do it. 

If you begin to pigeonhole God, if you define God with some label or set of labels even, what happens?   You’re no longer worshipping God.   You’re worshipping something that may have some aspects of God, but you’re not worshipping God. 

Still, God does get pretty harsh.  What’s the deal with punishment for four generations?   Is God going to go on some sort of vengeance spree on our great grand kids.  No.  God is saying, you disobey this command, it doesn’t only hurt you.  It hurts generation after generation.  

It’s like when you pigeonhole a person.  When you pigeonhole, you have, in a very real sense, stopped relating to that actual person.  You are relating instead to an image you’ve constructed of that person.   You start fitting this person into that image, into the assumptions you’ve made. That person stops being a living breathing person to you.  Instead, they become an object in our head.  And when you do that, you not only distort the person.  You distort any relationship you could have in serious ways.   Now as bad as that is with a person, when you do that with God, it gets a lot worse.    

When you start connecting to a distorted image of God, you have lost touch not simply with another person.  You have lost touch with reality.   That distorted image leads you to distorted relationships not only with God but everyone.  It leads to all sorts of distorted ideas that twist you up, that steer you wrong.  And then if you share those same distortions with your kids then they share it with their kids and so on.   Generations pass, centuries even before that distortion gets made right.   Pigeonholing God doesn’t just wreck your life.  It wrecks life for generations to come. 

You see.  Images limit you.  They can never say enough.   So, instead God uses language.  And that makes sense.   Words have almost limitless potential.   Yet even words, no matter how good they may be, fully get God.   Language helps you understand yes, things like God is love, or God is good or faithful.    Language helps you discover who God is.  But still language can never fully get God.  Nothing can.   That’s why the Bible uses all sorts of words to describe God. Here are a few.   Fire, Refuge, Gardener, King, Warrior, Mother Hen, Shepherd, Bread, Aroma, Clothing, Water, Crown, King, Leader, Holy One, Help, Peace, Banner, Rock.   I could go on, but you get the idea.   But even those words don’t fully get it.  No words can.   

Still like with people, you’ve got to call God something.  So, you and I come up with a word or even a few we like for God, like well, the word God.  That’s ok.  You’ve got to call God something.   It can’t just be.  Hey You.    But what can happen is you start mistaking your words for the real thing.  Without even noticing it, you replace the infinite, indefinable God with your own pigeon-holed version.  And that pigeonhole can twist you up in some serious ways. 

Last year, I did a whole series on images of God from the Bible.  We talked about God as an aroma, as clothing, all sorts of stuff.   But then I talked about God as a woman in labor, an image you find in the Bible.  Sheesh the e-mails I got.   But I shouldn’t be surprised. 

Years ago, I had a pastor couple who did a similar series in their church.  I even happened to be worshipping with them the Sunday that one of them preached a sermon to calm the blowback that series created.    After worship, she invited folks to continue the discussion in the assembly hall next door.   So, I went to check it out.  I figured.  There would be some interesting discussion on what they had been talking about.   I did find the discussion interesting but not in the way I thought.   These pastors walked into a buzz saw of rage.  These pastors had dared to say you could describe God with feminine images, again something the Bible does.   But people got so upset.  The sacrilege, the horror.   I was stunned.  Ok, maybe that’s not your chosen words for God, but come on.  Why are you so upset?  As I look back, I get it.  These folks thought they had been worshipping God.   But they were only worshipping a certain image of God. They had their particular pigeonhole of God, but they had mistaken that for the real deal.  In other words, they had created an idol.  And when their pastors came along, and broke that idol apart, they got mad, really mad.  But a distorted image of God does more than make folks mad.  A distorted image turns people away from the real God altogether. 

When I lived in New York City, I went out to a dance club with some folks.  As we rode in the cab to the club, I started talking religion with the cabbie, who was Sikh.   He asked me.  What do you believe?   I shared about God’s love and how that love in Jesus had changed my life.   But one of the guys in the cab looked at me with this puzzled expression on his face.   As we got out of the cab, he turned to me and said, “That’s what it’s about?  In the church I grew up in, all I heard about was a God of vengeance and judgment.”   And that twisted image of God had turned him away from experiencing the real deal. 

I often meet people who have turned away from any relationship with God because of a distorted image of God that others gave them.   People threw up an idol in their face and said believe this or else.   And they turned away.  And they were right.  What they were seeing wasn’t God.  It was an idol, a pigeon-holed version, a distorted image of the real thing.  But sadly, they believed they were seeing God.  So, when someone talks about God to them now, all they see is that distorted image.   It could be generations before someone breaks free of the distortion and experiences the real God. 

It used to bug me that I couldn’t figure God out.  People would come up to me and ask me a question about God that I couldn’t answer.  I felt inadequate.  I’m a pastor.  I should know the answer.   Now I realize how ridiculous that all is.  I can’t even figure out the people around me. Why in the world do I think that I can figure out God?

In fact, if you ever get to a point where you think you’ve figured out everything about God, than you are in trouble.  You may not even be connecting with God anymore.  You’ll be connecting with some pigeon-holed image you’ve come up with on your own.  You’ll be worshipping an idol.  If God could be figured out, then God wouldn’t be God.  That’s why, God says, “don’t pigeon-hole me.”  The minute you do that, you’ve lost touch with God. 

Still, it’s so easy to do.  So, how do you avoid it?  How do you avoid getting caught up in a false image, a pigeon-hole of who God is?  Well, you can’t on your own.  But God can do what you can’t. 

Do you know what it’s like when you have a deep relationship with someone, how the deeper it goes, the more mysterious and complex the person becomes?  You discover depths in that person you never saw before.  Your assumptions get blown away.  You realize.  You’ll never be able to truly know that person.  But that doesn’t make you value the relationship less.  It makes you value it more.  You realize the wondrous mystery that this person is, that every person is. 

And God wants that sort of relationship with you.   In Jesus, God even became one of us so that relationship could happen.   In Jesus, God even died to make it happen.   That means.  God can become as real to you as the person sitting next to you in the pew, as near as the air you breathe.  All you need to do is tell God.  I want that.  I want to know you like that. 

And if you know God like that already, simply ask this.  God, show me more.  Show me more of who you are.   Use what God has given you to help you see more too.  Read in the Bible.   Talk to God.  Just be quiet and let God speak to you.   Get to know someone and ask how they view God and why. 

But wherever you are in that God relationship, don’t limit it.  Talk to God with different words.  Call God your refuge or your rock or your friend or even your lover (that’s in the Bible too.).   And the more you experience this infinitely beautiful God, the more God will fill you with his love, with her faithfulness, with all the endless wonder of who God is.   In the face of that beauty, you will see every pigeonhole, every idol, for the limited thing it really is.   And the more you live in that beauty, you’ll realize.  You don’t want to settle for anything less.