God as Dog

Bible writers have employed many metaphors for God: a mother hen, a rushing wind, a pillar of cloud, a burning bush, a light, a door, a path, even, oddly enough, an old man with long white hair. Of all the metaphors I discovered, I’m pretty sure a dog is not one of them. But as I ponder the shift in my thinking about the character of God a vivid dog metaphor comes to mind. 

As a child I was told that God could not forgive us for a sin we hadn’t confessed. This meant that each night I had to think over the day and name each wrong I had done, confessing it and asking for His forgiveness. I was terrified that I would forget one of the sins on one of the days (as though I was even capable of recognizing and naming them all, let alone never missing one night’s session of confession.) One time I heard someone suggest that I could end the confession with “and any other sin I may have forgotten.” From then on that’s how the list of confessed sins ended, with one personalized twist: “… and any other sin I may have forgotten on any day or night since my very first.”) 

This, of course, let me gain the upper hand since I could knowingly sin, confident that this evening’s or next week’s confession session would obligate God to let me off the hook. In my simplistic and crafty mind, God was a careful guardian keeping riffraff out of heaven. He didn’t actually see me, His only job was to see through me like an x-ray machine looking for that speck of cancerous sin. But, boy!, if He did see that speck, then “x-ray” became “ray gun” and zap! I was a goner… unless I was gibbering out a confession just in the nick of time. I was pretty confident of my timing since God seemed to swing by mostly at bedtime. 

But that’s the problem with essentially human solutions to sin. It’s the “pagan problem.” It way underestimates the depth and complexity of sin, and I has no concept of the depth and compassion of God. 

Anyway, the study I’ve just completed on the evangelical views of hell left me with a similar picture: God is a snarling Rottweiler wandering freely around the castle walls of heaven. We’re hiding in the bushes hoping his great sense of smell doesn’t detect us. Maybe if we can sneak past the vicious dog, we can be “home free” in heaven. 

But my study of Colossians and Romans 8 tells me that God is more like a noble Saint Bernard roaming far and wide. He has His little flask of brandy and we are perishing in a snowdrift hoping against hope that His great sense of smell will lead Him to us. If this Hound of Heaven finds His way into our hearts we will already be “home free.” And whatever comes next will be gloriously up to the One with whom we can trust our very lives.