Describing Jesus to strangers on the street still seems impossible to me. He’s Someone you have to experience for yourself, and mere words can’t encompass everything He means to me. Romanian ministry has mostly consisted of trying to describe God to those who see Him as the gold-encrusted paintings plastered on the walls of the Orthodox Churches, or this intangible substance that hovers ‘somewhere above’, unwilling to be touched by man and steaming in perpetual judgement. A trend that has infected the younger generation is that God is love, and only love. He approves of misdemeanor and cares not whether we sin, as long as we are unoffensive to our neighbor. I know God truer than this, I know His voice through scripture and experience, but it doesn’t mean I totally understand Him.

Humans love metaphors for God. “He’s like your husband,” or “His love is like a father’s love,” or “What a friend we have in Jesus,” are all phrases with which modern Christians evangelize without proper explanation. The truth is, the love of God surpasses language, His mercy transcends human experience, and His holiness can only be described through being in the presence of it. His joy is unlike any other joy, His peace cannot be confused with complacency or silence, and the fruit that comes from the indwelling of His Spirit cannot be compared with any emotion this world could possibly offer. Metaphor skews our knowledge of God into our human experience, and it paints an incomplete picture to His indescribable character. 

What happens when our experience of love is less than the immaculate love of Christ? What happens when our parents reveal their weakness, our friends fail us, or our lovers leave us? If this earthly love is all we can compare God’s love with, then we are left stranded in fragile waters, believing that if God exists, He’ll fail us just like every human we have ever known. This is the problem missionaries face when speaking with the younger generations. Because they have endured a corrupted love, they naturally assume that God’s love is corrupted too. 

If I could say one thing to the teenagers I met while building relationships in Craiova, I would say that I’m sorry for what they have been through that creates mistrust in the only One who is completely Faithful. I’m sorry that the way you were treated by family, friends, or romantic partners has tainted your portrait of God. I’m sorry Christianity looks like standing and sitting and confessing and long skirts and short prayers. Christ is not a metaphor, He is more than I can describe. He is more than a Father or a Friend or a Lover, He is “I AM”, indescribable, uncontainable, eternally constant, incredibly kind, wonderfully merciful, unreachably wise, mercifully just, and a million more things I couldn’t possibly fit into a scroll a million miles long, much less a 5-minute online blog. Don’t take my word for it, though. Go read for yourself. The Bible breathes of His character, He whispers mysteries of Himself through the ink-polished pages. Although God is not like us, and we will never fully understand Him, He isn’t unreachable. He has made Himself known to us. The Holy One, came down in tangible form, in human likeness, taking the form of a servant, so that we would be able to look into His eyes and hold His hands. Knowledge of the Lord Almighty is within our grasp. From the Beginning, His plan was for us to know Him as He truly is. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters fill the sea (Habakuk 2:14). This is true for the whole world, as it is for Craiova.