'What do you think created everything?'
That's the question put to a group of children in a viral Youtube video that has garnered over 3 million views. The video 'Kids Describe God to an Illustrator' made by Cut, features various children attempting to describe God to an artist.
'We're going to draw what you guys imagine God might look like,' the illustator Koji says.
He asks the children 'What do you know about God?', and gets some interesting responses.
Some opt for the theologically orthodox: 'He made the Earth, he made humans', and 'He's invisible'.
While another goes for the popular caricature: 'A guy up in the clouds, kinda like in The Simpsons.'
One child asserts simply: 'He's a frog.'
The illustrations born of the children's' imaginations are amusing and thought-provoking. Suggested characteristics of the divine include two heads, a round button nose, a Mohawk hairstyle and the head of a lion.
One child envisions an apocalyptic scene, with God dueling furry, tentacled demons from Mars. Another more serene picture sees God as a peaceful Norwegian-looking man in a bathrobe.
Most of the children seem to think that God is not a woman.
One child muses that 'everyone is kind of related in some way, because they came from God'.
The video is an insight into the mind of a child and the scope of the human imagination. It also poses classical questions about human beings' search for God, and what 'God' even is.
Christian theology has always asserted that God is a deeply personal being, albeit one never fully comprehended by man – though some prophets have glimpsed his transcendent glory. However, at the heart of the Bible is the notion that God does indeed have a face: God looks like Jesus Christ.
The evangelist John wrote: 'No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known' (John 1:18).
God's face, that of a humble Middle-eastern Jew, might have easily been missed. On the cross however, in deep self-giving sacrifice, God revealed an image that humanity could never forget.
