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It has been said that all of us are theologians. We all have a picture of God in our heads. But is your picture of God correct? Keep listening to find out. Hi, my name is Terence and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review “Portrait of God: Rediscovering the Attributes of God through the Stories of His People” by Jack Mooring. 224 pages, published by David C. Cook Publishing in August 2024. Available in Amazon Kindle for USD9.99 and in Logos for USD10.79. I received a free review copy but the publisher has no input to my review. ## Systematic Theology Through BiographyToday's book promises to explain the Attributes of God through the lives of Christians. But wait, someone says, “If you really want to know the Attributes of God, you should get a good book on Systematic Theology. The bigger the better.” So grunts the theological egghead. Nope. If the size doesn’t scare people off, the title “Systematic Theology” would. Then someone says, “Just get J.I. Packer’s ‘Knowing God’.” That’s a great book. A classic. But today's book gives us a different way to know God’s attributes and that is through stories. Bible stories have helped children know God. Much of the Bible consists of stories of God and His People. So we could say that today’s book is not inventing a new approach but rather adapts the biblical way of knowing God: through the stories of him interacting with his people. ## Art Class with a Divine SubjectIn this book, Jack Mooring wants us to paint a portrait of God. If this sounds a bit artsy-fartsy to you, maybe it’s because Mooring was an artist. More, accurately, a musician. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he is the former band member with the Grammy Award-nominated group Leeland. Mooring is also the founding pastor of a church, Celebration of Life Church in Nashville. So he is not the typical professional theologian who writes a book on the attributes of God. He is just a passionate Christian who wants everyone to know God. And he takes hold of artistic license to separate himself from the professional theologians. We will do a portrait of God. Using the lives of God's people as the brushstrokes. ## A Brushstroke of JoyConsider this: Whose life do you think best reveals God’s joy? Think of all the great men and women who have served God through the ages. Who would best demonstrate the joy of the Lord? Mooring chooses C.S. Lewis. The chapter starts with Lewis as a young man arriving at Oxford University. But then, the Great War happened. I quote:> The war was a brief but horrific interlude in his life. He saw unbearable things. His closest friend in his company was killed. While raised in a Christian home in Ireland, he’d been brought up on the teachings of the church, but early on he had decided God couldn’t be real. His mother had died when he was only nine years old. He remembered praying that God would save her life, but his desperate request seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.>> His childhood angst at God had turned into full-blown atheism as a young man. And if his journey away from God needed any more help, his traumatic experiences in the war had seared his mind. Later, Mooring writes:> There were cracks in Lewis’s armor. For all his resistance against God, he had a weak spot for joy. Deep joy. The joy that aches in your belly when you see something truly beautiful. You reach for it but can’t grasp it. You try to recreate the same feeling the next day, only to find it missing. This haunted Lewis.>> He began to do what he always did to find answers: He read books and talked deeply with his friends. Famously, one of his friends was J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien and others encouraged Lewis in his search for answers. I quote:> Lewis raised a challenge to his friends: “What separates Christianity from any other myth? After all, there are other stories about a god ‘saving’ his people.”>> His friends responded with an idea that changed his life. “Yes, Christianity is a myth,” they said. “But it is the only true myth.”>> Suddenly, he realized that the Norse mythology he loved was never the real source of the joy he felt. It was God. Every good and beautiful myth was simply pointing to the one true “myth”. The chapter interleaves episodes of Lewis’ life with Mooring’s own comments and reflections. A YouTube video about a ten-million-dollar mountain chalet sends Mooring through a whirlwind of emotions from curiosity, awe, desire and lust, to disappointment, jealousy, embarrassment and resignation. Everybody who has watched an influencer boasting of cars, food or travel knows what Mooring felt. Mooring shows us YouTube-addicts that our desire is a reminder that God is our true desire. Just like C.S. Lewis, we are searching for the real source of joy: God. And that's how every chapter goes. He shares a story then a reflection to bridge the ...