My Elevator Operator*
From Just Some Guy in the Sky to My Lord and Savior
When I was younger I absolutely hated being alone. I still do today but it was a lot worse when I was a young child. So, you can imagine my fear when my preschool teacher told me that one day some guy named God was going to drop out of the sky, take everyone I’ve ever known up to heaven, and leave me behind by myself forever. I didn’t fully understand why I was going to be “left behind” — I didn’t really care to know — but I did know that I was not going to let that happen.
I don’t think that I envisioned God as something other than just a guy in the sky who would one day take all my friends and family up to heaven. It’s hard for me to describe how I envisioned him because I was so young and I didn’t really focus on who or what God was; I was more focused on how horrible it would have been to be left all alone when He did return, but I guess I saw Him more as a really powerful elevator operator who kind of stood in the corner and pressed the buttons but never talked or even look at the people who were riding the elevator to heaven. All I really understood was that if I wanted to go with everyone else I had to ask for Him to come and “live inside my heart” and then I could go.
Therefore, with that in mind, I saw God as a key or secret password into heaven and nothing more than just that. I remember every time we got up to go get in line for whatever it was we were going to, I would bow my head and pray “dear God, please come into my heart”; and I did this everyday without fail. My first experience with God was completely molded from fear and anxiety and quite honestly God scared me to death.
However, I am 19 now and I have developed a more healthy fear of God and consider Him as a friend that I still respect as an authority figure in my life. Like that coach in high school who was cool enough to be considered as a friend but you still respected them because at the end of the day they still have authority over you and want the best for you. Although sometimes it can get kind of awkward like — He is standing in front of me waiting for me to get back to doing the right thing and get back to walking alongside him.
In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller describes his first experience with God from hearing Him as God the Father. His father was not always around so he saw God as “a stiff, oily man who wanted to move into [his] house and share a bed with [his] mother.” Miller also mentions that he also attended a wealthy church so he projected that onto God and says that he saw God as “a man with a lot of money and drove a big car.” Miller seemed to get his first ideas of God from what he had heard and seen around him as a child. His surrounding are what molded his perception of who God was and what He “looked” like. Miller and I are the same in this aspect. I had only heard as God who could do all these miracles and who would one day drop out of the sky and take everyone away, so of course I molded my image of God from what I had as a child.
Yet some people can get their visions of God without having a biblical background. The famous singer John Lennon explained that he believed in God, but “not as an old man in the sky.” From Lennon’s point of view, God is a spirit that lives inside all of us. This is vastly different from both mine and Miller’s first images of God as and actual human person with flesh and bone. Some people who don’t have that foundation of what and who God is will think in terms of what little knowledge they have about God. And that’s okay; sometimes you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.
Although Lennon’s image of God doesn’t seem to expand or grow into something else, Miller and I both come to a new image of God. I saw God more as a friend on who I can share a relationship with. Miller’s idea grew as God being on a “dirt road” ahead of him. This kind of mindset change allows for people to really grow closer to God and really be able to reflect on how we see him ourselves. 9
However, Lennon, Miller, and my views on God all come from a personal source even though they all are so very different from each other. I saw God as my personal password of key into heaven while Miller saw Him more as a father figure while Lennon saw God as a spirit the live in each and every one of us. While these examples all are different, they all have a personal aspect to them that allows us to feel some sort of deeper connection to God. This also gives us more room to grow and to rethink and remold our images of God.
