Show Me Your Man

A smooth tongue and a graceful turn of phrase give pleasure, and win the sort of praise that empty pride enjoys, to miserable people whose minds have been ruined. But a man who loves truth pays no attention to speech that has been fouled. He examines what the words actually do — what the thing is, and what kind of thing it is. [a]

So then, my friend, since you have battered me with empty words, boasting about your gods of stone and wood, hammered and cast, molded and painted, gods that neither see nor hear — for they are idols, the work of human hands — and since on top of that you call me a Christian, as though the name were a disgrace to carry: I for my part admit that I am a Christian, and I carry this name that God loves, hoping to be of use to God. It is not, as you suppose, that the name of God is a hard thing to bear. It may rather be that you think this way about God because you are still of no use to God yourself.

But suppose you say to me, “Show me your God.” Then I would answer, “Show me your man, and I will show you my God.” Show me, that is, that the eyes of your soul can see and the ears of your heart can hear. [c]

People who see with the eyes of the body take in the business of this life and this earth, and at the same time tell one thing from another — light or darkness, white or black, ugly or beautiful, well proportioned and to scale or shapeless and out of scale, oversized or cut short. It is the same with hearing: we tell a high note from a low one, and both from a sweet one. And so it goes with the ears of the heart and the eyes of the soul — it is by these that a person is able to look at God. God is seen by those who are able to see him, once the eyes of their soul are open. Everyone has eyes; but in some they are clouded over and do not see the light of the sun. That the blind cannot see does not mean the sun has stopped shining. Let the blind blame themselves and their own eyes.

That is your case too, my friend. The eyes of your soul are clouded over by your sins and your evil deeds. A person’s soul ought to be kept clean the way a mirror is kept polished. Once there is rust on the mirror, a man’s face cannot be seen in it; and once there is sin in a man, that man cannot look at God.

So you show me yourself. Are you not an adulterer? Not sexually immoral? Not a thief? Not a robber? Not a swindler? Do you not lie with males? Are you not insolent, or slanderous, or quick-tempered, or envious, or a braggart, or full of contempt for others, or a man who uses his fists, or a lover of money, or disobedient to your parents? Do you not sell your own children? God does not show himself to people who do these things, unless they first clean themselves of every defilement. All of it leaves you in the dark, the way a film forming over the eyes keeps them from looking straight at the light of the sun. So it is with you, my friend: your godless acts leave you in the dark, so that you cannot see God.

So you will say to me, “You are the one who sees God — describe to me what God looks like.” Listen, my friend. What God looks like cannot be spoken or put into words; eyes made of flesh cannot see it. In glory he cannot be contained; in greatness, not grasped; in height, beyond imagining; in strength, past comparing; in wisdom, unmatched; in goodness, impossible to copy; in the good he does, beyond describing. [e]

If I call him Light, I am naming something he made. If I call him Word, I am naming his beginning. If I say Mind, I am speaking of his intelligence. If I say Spirit, I am speaking of his breathing. If I say Wisdom, I am speaking of his offspring. If I say Strength, I am speaking of his might. If I say Power, I am speaking of his working. If I say Providence, I am speaking of his goodness. If I say Kingdom, I am speaking of his glory. If I say Lord, I am calling him judge. If I say Judge, I am calling him just. If I say Father, I am calling him everything. If I say Fire, I am speaking of his anger.

So you will say to me, “Does God get angry?” He certainly does. He is angry at people who do wrong; and he is good and kind and full of pity toward those who love him and fear him. He trains those who worship God and is a father to those who do right, and he is judge and punisher of those who do not.

He has no beginning, because he was never brought into being; and he does not change, because he cannot die. He is called God because he placed everything on a footing he himself secures, and because of running — and running here means moving, being at work, feeding, foreseeing, governing, and making everything alive. He is Lord because he is lord of the whole; Father because he is before the whole; Craftsman and Maker because he is the founder and maker of the whole; the Highest because he is above everything; Almighty because he himself holds and encloses everything. The heights of the heavens, the depths of the deeps, and the ends of the inhabited world are in his hand, and there is nowhere that is his resting place. The heavens are his work, the earth his making, the sea his creature; man is his handiwork and his image. Sun, moon, and stars are his elements, made for signs and seasons and days and years, to serve mankind and be at its disposal. And God made all things out of things that were not, into things that are, so that through his works his greatness might be known and understood. [h]

The soul in a human being is not seen — it is invisible to people — and yet the soul is recognized by the movement of the body. It is the same with God: he cannot be seen by human eyes, but he is seen and recognized through his providence and his works. When a man sees a ship at sea, rigged and running and coming into harbor, he will obviously conclude there is a pilot aboard steering her. In the same way we have to conclude that God is the pilot of the whole, even though he is not seen by eyes of flesh, since nothing can contain him. If a man cannot look straight at the sun — the smallest of the heavenly bodies — because its heat and force are too much for him, how much less can a mortal man face the glory of God, which cannot even be described? [i]

Think of a pomegranate. It has a rind holding it together, and inside are many cells and chambers divided by thin skins, with many seeds living inside them. In the same way the whole creation is held within the spirit of God, and the spirit that holds it is itself held, along with the creation, within the hand of God. And just as the pomegranate seed living inside cannot see what is outside the shell, being inside itself, so a man, shut in with the whole creation inside the hand of God, cannot look at God.

And then — people believe an earthly king exists, though not everyone sees him. They know him by his laws and his decrees, by his officials, his troops, and his portraits. And you are unwilling to have God known by his works and his powers?

Look hard at his works, my friend. The seasons changing on schedule and the shifts of weather; the well-ordered course of the elements; the well-ordered march of days and nights and months and years; the different beauties of seeds and plants and fruits; the endless variety in the breeding of four-footed animals, birds, crawling things, and swimming things, in fresh water and in the sea. Or look at the understanding placed in the animals themselves for bearing and raising young — not for their own use, but so that man may have them; and the providence with which God prepares food for every living thing; and the order by which he laid it down that everything should serve mankind. Look at the flowing of sweet springs and rivers that never run dry, and the supply of dew and showers and rains given in their season; the endlessly varied movement of the heavenly bodies — the morning star rising and signaling that the full light is on its way, the band of the Pleiades and Orion, Arcturus, and the dance of the other stars turning in the circle of heaven, every one of which the many-sided wisdom of God has called by its own name. [j]

He alone is God, who made light out of darkness, and the chambers of the south wind, and the storehouses of the deep, and the boundaries of the seas, and the storehouses of snow and hail; who gathers the waters in the storehouses of the deep and the darkness in his own stores, and brings the light out of his stores — sweet light, longed for, delightful; who brings clouds up from the end of the earth and multiplies lightning for the rain; who sends the thunder to frighten, and gives warning of the thunderclap by the lightning first, so that no one is so suddenly shaken that the life goes out of him; and who measures out just enough of the lightning that comes down out of the sky that it does not set the earth on fire. If the lightning were given its full authority it would burn the earth up, and if the thunder were, it would throw down everything on it.

This is my God, the Lord of the whole: the one who alone stretched out the sky and set the breadth of what lies under it; who churns up the basin of the sea and makes its waves roar; who is master of its strength and quiets the surging of its waves; who founded the earth on the waters and gave it a spirit to feed it, whose breath brings the whole to life, and who, if he holds that spirit back to himself, will leave the whole to fail. It is by him you speak, man; it is his spirit you breathe; and it is he you do not know. This has happened to you because your soul is blind and your heart has gone hard. [l]

But if you want to be, you can be cured. Put yourself in the doctor’s hands, and he will operate on the eyes of your soul and of your heart. Who is the doctor? God — who cures and gives life through his Word and his Wisdom. God made everything through his Word and his Wisdom: “By his word the heavens were made firm, and by his spirit all their host.” His wisdom is supreme. By his wisdom God founded the earth; by understanding he made the heavens ready; by his knowledge the deeps were split open, and the clouds poured out dew.

If you take these things in, my friend, and live purely and devoutly and rightly, you can see God. But before anything else, let faith and the fear of God take the lead in your heart, and then you will understand these things. When you have taken off what dies and put on what cannot decay, then you will see God as he deserves to be seen. God will raise your flesh immortal along with your soul; and then, having become immortal yourself, you will see the Immortal — if you trust him now. And then you will know that you have spoken unjustly against him.

But you do not believe that the dead are raised. When it happens you will believe, willing or not — and your faith will be counted as unbelief, if you do not believe now. [m]

And why don’t you believe? Don’t you know that faith goes first in everything we do? What farmer can reap unless he first entrusts the seed to the ground? Who can get across the sea unless he first entrusts himself to the boat and the pilot? What sick man can be cured unless he first entrusts himself to the doctor? What craft or field of knowledge can anyone learn unless he first hands himself over and trusts the teacher? If the farmer trusts the ground, and the man at sea the boat, and the sick man the doctor, will you not trust yourself to God, when you already hold so many deposits from him?

First, that he made you out of what did not exist into being. For if there was a time when your father did not exist, nor your mother, much more was there a time when you did not exist yourself. He shaped you out of a little wet substance, out of the smallest drop — which itself did not once exist — and God brought you forward into this life. And then: you believe that statues made by human beings are gods and work wonders, and you do not believe that the God who made you is able to make you again afterwards?

As for the gods you say you worship, the names are the names of dead men. And what sort of men were they? Is Kronos not found to be a child-eater, devouring his own children? And if you name his son Zeus, learn what he did and how he lived. First, on Mount Ida he was nursed by a goat, and — so the stories go — he cut its throat, skinned it, and made himself a coat out of the hide. The rest of what he did, sleeping with his own sister, committing adultery, and molesting children, Homer and the other poets set out better than I can. [n]

Why should I go on and list his sons? Heracles burning himself alive; Dionysus drunk and raving; Apollo afraid of Achilles and running from him, in love with Daphne, and not knowing what had become of Hyacinthus; Aphrodite wounded; Ares the destroyer of men; and the ichor running out of these so-called gods.

And that is putting it mildly, when the god called Osiris turns out to have been cut in pieces, and every year rites are held for him as though he were being lost and found and searched for limb by limb — and it is neither understood that he perishes nor shown that he is found. Why should I mention Attis castrated, or Adonis wandering in the woods, out hunting and wounded by a boar; or Asclepius struck by a thunderbolt; or Serapis, the runaway who came from Sinope to Alexandria; or the Scythian Artemis — herself a runaway too, and a killer of men, and a huntress, and in love with Endymion? It is not we who say these things. Your own historians and poets announce them.

Why should I go on and list the crowd of animals the Egyptians worship — crawling things, cattle, wild beasts, birds, fish in the water — and beyond that, footbaths and shameful noises? And if you bring up the Greeks and the rest of the nations, they worship stones and wood and other kinds of matter: the likenesses, as I said just now, of dead men. Phidias is found at Pisa making the Olympian Zeus for the Eleans, and at Athens the Athena on the Acropolis. [p]

And I will ask you a question of my own, my friend. How many Zeuses turn out to exist? First there is the one called Zeus the Olympian; then Zeus of Latium, Zeus of Casius, Zeus of the Thunderbolt, Zeus the Forefather, Zeus of the All-Night Festival, Zeus Keeper of the City, and Zeus of the Capitol. And that Zeus who was the son of Kronos and became king of the Cretans has a tomb in Crete; the rest, perhaps, were not thought worthy even of burial.

And if you bring up the mother of the so-called gods — may it never happen that my mouth tells out what she did, for such things are forbidden even to name among us, or what is done by the attendants who serve her, or how much in taxes and levies she and her sons hand over to the king. These are not gods but idols, as I have already said: the works of human hands and unclean demons. And may all who make them and put their hope in them become like them.

So I would rather honor the king — not by bowing down to him, but by praying for him. The one I bow down to is God, the God who truly is and is true, since I know that the king was made by him. [s]

So you will say to me, “Why do you not bow down to the king?” Because he was not made to be bowed down to, but to be honored with the honor the law gives him. He is not a god, but a man appointed by God — not to be bowed down to, but to judge justly. In a manner of speaking, an administration has been entrusted to him by God. And in fact he himself does not want the men he has appointed under him to be called kings: “king” is his own title, and no one else is allowed to be called it. In the same way, no one is to be bowed down to except God alone. So you are wrong at every point, my friend.

Honor the king: be loyal to him, submit to him, pray for him. Do that, and you are doing the will of God. For the law of God says, “Honor God, my son, and the king, and do not disobey either of them; for suddenly they will take vengeance on their enemies.”

And about your laughing at me and calling me “Christian” — you do not know what you are saying. In the first place, what is anointed is pleasant and useful and nothing to laugh at. What ship can be useful and come through safe unless it is first oiled? What tower or house is good to look at and useful when it has not been coated? What man, coming into this life or competing in the games, is not rubbed with oil? What work or ornament can have any beauty unless it is oiled and polished? And the air, and everything under heaven, is in a way anointed with light and with spirit. So you are unwilling to be anointed with the oil of God? This, then, is why we are called Christians: because we are anointed with the oil of God. [w]