Small / Big

Do we think God is big or small? It’s not a trick question. Few people would consciously think of God as small or petty. Titles like ‘Creator of the Universe’, ‘Supreme Being’, ‘Omnipresent Omnipotent One’ tend to give the clue that God is big.

However, sometimes it seems we have certain preconceptions of God that tell a different story. I’ve kind of caricatured them below – I don’t imagine many Christians would just come out and say these things. But, these assumptions are sometimes implicit in the way we talk or think about Him. If these are true then doesn’t it make God rather… smaller:

• God is bound by doctrines and theologies as they are taught and understood by men.
• I can understand all of God’s ways, His purposes, His likes and dislikes.
• God thinks a lot like I do. He talks a lot like I do, too.
• God is offended and outraged at exactly the same stuff that offends and outrages me.
• God is interested in and relevant to only the ‘spiritual’ side of my life – stuff that happens on a Sunday, or when I pray. My relationship with God is a private matter.
• God is deeply uncomfortable with doubts and questions. He would much prefer that we believe blindly, as an act of will rather than engage in any messy searching.
• God only knows about stuff if He is kept informed by people. Most of my prayer time is spent with me talking, keeping God up to speed. I often help Him out by telling Him how situations can be best resolved.
• God can only be found inside a church.
• In fact God can only be found inside ‘our’ particular denomination of church. He is very picky like that. There are some other denominations that are nearly there…but basically the more they disagree with us, the less likely you are to find God there.
• And obviously God can only talk to and use Christians for His purposes. He’s only really interested in Christians. Obviously, He would like other people to become Christians… so that He can start being interested in them!
• Although, in theory God loves everyone, in practice He actually only loves us.
• God likes rules and legal deals. He likes neat criteria by which we can all judge… well pretty much everything. If you don’t fit the criteria… well sorry: God would like to help, but it’s just not possible.
• God loves labels. He particularly enjoys very fastidious definitions of when a label should or should not apply. Terms like ‘Christian’ and ‘Non-Christian’ mean a lot to God, and He absolutely agrees to constrain Himself to work within them.
• God likes Christian branded products: Christian CDs, Christian TV and Radio, Christian books, films, websites… Anything else is, well, a bit tainted. Or worse in complete thrall to The Prince of Darkness. So it doesn’t matter how bad it is… Buy Christian.
• By extension, it is completely impossible to be inspired or moved closer to God by anything ‘non-Christian’.
• If some practise, technology or other aspect of the Created world is somehow adopted by people who don’t call themselves ‘Christian’ or worse espouse a different faith perspective, then we should have nothing to do with it. It has become tainted, ‘dodgy’ or a ‘gateway to evil influences’. God believes firmly in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
• God has no sense of humour. Despite the fact that He created ours…
• When thinking about the nature of God, it is unproblematic and correct to use expressions like ‘God can’t’. There is no conceptual problem with ascribing absolute limitations to the Creator of the Universe, The Most High, He That Fills All In All.
• If God could have any job then it would probably be an accountant. Or perhaps a solicitor dealing in some very technical aspect of the law. The Great Artist of Creation, the Composer of the Cosmos, who thought smell and taste and touch and rainbows and millions of different species of beetle and sunsets and music and wine and laughter and silence and Autumn and joy for no reason and curry and sleeping children’s faces and forgiveness and friendship were worth weaving into the texture of the universe… is always best imagined as a cold, grey, balancer of scales.
• God rarely surprises me. I am rarely delighted in Him.

God is BIG. Bigger than we imagine. Bigger than we dream.

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