Example Insight Post: "What if God was one of us?"

I was in Café Coco with my friend Jean one evening trying to get some studying in for exams before this Christmas break. It was an especially memorable evening because Coco is one of the best places in Nashville to people-watch and feel very bohemian and intellectual while actually being cramped. It was also memorable because I was there until 3 in the morning reading about cannibalism and trying to convince Jean it was time to leave.
Either way, one thing I loved about the place was the music. It was straight REM alternating with The Smiths so my heart was happy. However, later on, Joan Osburne's hit song from the 90's came on and the following profound lyrics were ingrained in my head:

“If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you wanna to see
If seeing meant that
you would have to believe
in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints
and all the prophets

And yeah, yeah, God he is great
Yeah, yeah, God he is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home”

I was struck by this song in a way I had not before: what does it mean to actually see his face? Well, like the singer notes, it infes acceptance. You would have to believe in Him and everything that entails. Also, it means that your life would be transformed by this knowledge. We can make the inference that seeing God = acknowledging him which = worshipping and obeying Him.
This is the lyric that I forgot so easily. While most of the people in the 90’s, including me, may have just focused mainly on the chorus and thought that Joan was being really pooetic: speaking to our disillusionment with organized religion and a desire for spirituality. It may all be the case, but the reality of God, at least in the Judeo-Christian context she seems to be addressing is a deeper fear that all of us have.
This is not a fear of lacking spirituality, but instead of being confronted by the Spirit. How many times have I knowingly sinned while justifying it to myself in the process that God will forgive me? Or even pretending, rediculously, that He is not there, doesn't see me, or is paying me no heed.
In this song the closeness and relativity of God are emphasized in him being one of us, “just a slob” like one of us. I’ve always answered the main rhetorical question in my head with “well, He already was one of us, in the form of Jesus.” I don’t think Christ was much of a “slob,” either, the Jews were already a very clean people due to their customs and laws. However, Joan probably didn’t mean it this way.
She seems to be asking what if God had our very same weaknesses, temptations, faults, and everything that made us a mess, a “slob?” While we believe that Christ did not give into sin, he saw life through our eyes. He was a "slob" in this sense, he went through everything we do, even moreso unto the cross. His compassion for us is what made him unclean in the eyes of the Pharisees. He associated with and touched, both physically and spiritually the unclean, the needy, the lonely, the filthy, and corporately the sinful.
This reminds me of one parable Jesus told of the Pharisee who prayed a self congratulatory prayer to God, praising himself that he kept all the law and was so righteous, unlike the pitiful tax collector that he espied. Whereas the tax-collector, on the other hand, prayed to the Lord confessiong that he was a sinner and to have mercy on him. Jesus, God in the flesh, "one of us," confronted us with the reality of what he feels when hearing our prayer. He called us out on our pride because we are so naïve as to put him in a box.
So if we see his face, what should we do then? In many ways this is the penultimate question of our very life and faith. Would we accept his authority or not? That is the crux of both this song and our existence. Let us look at the example in scripture of what people did when they saw God’s face:

Genesis 32:30 “So Jacob named the place Peniel [I.e. the face of God], for he said, " I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved."

Likewise, Moses, Paul, and Peter and John had to turn away their faces when confronted with the very face of God. The priest in the temple had to walk into the Holy of holies backwards, lest he see God's face and perish.
I think that this is another benefit of Jesus in human form. We see in the New Testament that he looks into our faces in order to illicit a response. He looks into us with love and compassion like he does in the Old Testament, where he called us “the little maiden” of His eye. In fact, unlike Jacob, who was relieved that his physical life was preserved, God looked at our face so that he may preserve our immortal lives, our souls. As it says numerous times in the bible, but so succinctly in Micah; “...He will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:19 That encounter would mean our lives would have to change.

When God looks at us whether it is His glory or his face as that of a man his nature does not change. As Jesus did with the multitudes, the woman at the well, the Roman Centurion, and the woman who washed his feet – there is both justice and love in his eyes. His justice and power is what made the patriarchs and priests fall down, yet his Love is what lifted them, and us, up again, and healed them.

I do not want to go on too long. But the only other thing that struck me anew from this song was the chorus of "yeahs." As if to either sarcastically dismiss or downplay God's goodness and greatness as hollow answers offered to those who have heard it all before. It can be a painful thing to realize how much of the heart of the world is in this song.
But without God's goodness or greatness, what is the significance of Him being one of us? One of the threats in Joan's song is that if he was a slob trying to find His way home, he's no longer God anymore. This may be precisely her point, to skewer Him by making him "more relevant".
Think to how petty and lascivious the Greco-Roman gods were because they were essentially humans with supernatural abilities. Would you worship and fall down in reverence to a bum trying to find his way home, or a habitual adulturer who is able to hurl lightning and is prone to bouts of temper and irrationality? I don't know about you, but neither of these "gods" seems very attractive, and not immediately appealing to recieve our love.

If God is neither great nor good, then this is perhaps one of the saddest songs ever written. If He is, however, as we know the truth and cand find it as a springboard to meditating on Him more; the extent of His love, and the greatness of His glory.


Praise be to God

Obinna