A guest post from Bryony Taylor:

I was very moved to watch the new campaign from Dove. In it women were asked to describe themselves to a forensic illustrator who drew images of the women as they described themselves. Strangers were also asked to describe the woman they had just met and the illustrator drew images of the stranger’s description. Both images were then shown to the woman who had been drawn. Of course there was quite a big difference between the images as described by the subjects themselves and how the strangers described them. An amazing lesson in itself about self-esteem I think. You can watch the video here:

Then I got to thinking, what if we did the same with the attributes of God? If you were to describe God, what would the illustrator draw? What would a stranger draw?

In Vincent Donovan’s book ‘Christianity Rediscovered’ he talks of his experience as a missionary to the Masai tribes. He describes how much of evangelism is simply a case of saying ‘you think God is like X, but actually God is like this, like Jesus’.

Often our perception of God can be as distorted as our perception of ourselves. This is partly why, I think, that God chose to reveal his full nature in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In coming to earth, God was saying ‘this is what I’m like’. The portrait of God is Jesus. Want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus.