Image of God



Heston as Moses



 God is all-powerful, all-seeing and the creator of everything.  But He’s accessible to people, wants to give them individual support and desires to be as close to you as your actual father. He’s also the hard-nosed judge who’ll determine where you spend eternity. Millions know Him intimately but nobody can confidently visualize Him.

There have been stabs at it, like George Burns in Oh, God and Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. These comedies put a contemporary spin on Him, unlike one director who tried to remain true to the Bible.

Legendary film director Cecil B.DeMille had a prolific, successful career that made him a film industry icon.  He was raised in a devout family and was a life-long Christian. He moved to Los Angeles where he rarely attended church but never gave up his faith.

His faith showed in films like The Godless Girl that was critical of a girl who rejected God. DeMille was thrilled when the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism protested it.

His best known production may be The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston as Moses. DeMille felt the hardest part of the production – in a film that required massive sets and 8,000 people – was deciding on the voice of God. When God first spoke to Moses, DeMille used Heston’s recorded voice, which he slowed down and deepened. The idea was to evoke Moses’s father’s voice, thinking God may have actually done this to make it more familiar and less frightening to Moses.

DeMille changed his mind later when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. The director used the voice of a friend instead and didn’t even list his name in the credits out of reverence for God.

Moviegoers associated Heston with Moses from then on, but this image glossed over Moses’s personal challenge. The man God chose to lead Israel struggled with a speech impediment. This wasn’t important to God and His attitude should be inspiring to stutterers, who constantly work to control their speech. In fairness to DeMille, it probably would’ve been awkward to address this in the context of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Hollywood has taken artistic license (to put it mildly) in the Burns and Freeman films.  Sometimes they teach valid lessons, like a scene where Bruce grants everyone’s prayer requests, only to find out they all prayed to win the lottery - which then paid pennies to each winner. It’s a great illustration of why God’s answering all prayers is unworkable. But God’s majesty is sacrificed and it’s hard to imagine either Burns or Freeman parting the Red Sea.

How can we get a handle on this? Try Jesus. He is God, in a form we can relate to. His presence here, in a man's body,  is part of God’s genius in reaching out and helping us to have a personal relationship with Him.

Think about it. You can’t “see” God the Father, but I’ll bet you can instantly envision Jesus and easily sense His comfort, love and holiness.

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