All of Them Face Down

“To what may we liken God? The answer, friends, is nothing. And we show that we may compare Him to nothing by comparing Him to everything that is worthy of Him, and, of course, nothing completely is. In Him we live, and move, and have our being. This is not zen Christianity; it is the recognition that the Bible does not give us a tiny schematic version of the attributes of God, carefully drawn to scale. Rather, the Bible points, sings, shouts, eats, alliterates, teaches, glories, compares and exults. Do you not see? Lift up your eyes on high, Isaiah says . . . Gods who do not know the future do not inhabit the highest heaven, as our God does, but rather are all face down in the ruins of Babylon, presided over by owls and jackals” (“The Loveliness of Orthodoxy” in Bound Only Once, pp. 27-28).