Is Your God Too Small?

More than a half a century ago British Bible scholar and author J.B. Phillips wrote a compelling book entitled: Your God Is Too Small (1952). Phillips believed that our image of God had not grown along with the advancements of the modern era. Given the increases in scientific knowledge and technology our understanding of God remains incredibly ancient and small. 

Phillips’ book remains a classic even after all these years and continues to serve as a warning against the dangers of shrinking God down to a size compatible with our premodern ways of understanding him, or with our pre-critical ways of reading our sacred Scriptures. 

I remember someone complaining that churches too often expect their worshipers to suspend their modern ways of thinking when they enter the sanctuary and begin thinking as if they were still living in ancient Biblical times. This is true of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals who have reduce God down to fit comfortably within their own premodern worldview. 

But what if we could bring ourselves to think bigger and bolder as enlightened people whose God is bigger than life itself? What if we could envision a life that matches the largeness of God’s grace and generosity towards the whole world? What if we could paint a portrait of God so larger that no artist’s canvass could contain that image?

You see I believe when we shrink God down to our own size we shrink ourselves as well. The smaller we make God the smaller we become as human beings! 

As we shrink in our capacity for generosity towards others we have considerably downsized God to fit within our own stinginess. When we shrink in our capacity for compassion towards those living on the margins of life we reduce God down to a jealous deity who only loves us white Americans. When we shrink in our ability or willingness to live without fear of the terrorist boogey man we shrink God down to a pitifully powerless deity who himself trembles at the perceived threat of boogey men hiding behind every tree.

When we reduce our capacity to love our neighbor (whomever that neighbor might be) our love of God shrinks we well. In Luke’s Gospel alone there is a story commonly known as the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” Jesus tells this compelling story because a lawyer had asked him what he must do to inherit “eternal life.” After further discussion Jesus answers him: “Love the Lord God with everything you have and your neighbor as well.” 

Well the lawyer was okay with the love-God-with-all-you-have part but the neighbor part was questionable? Surely Jesus must be mistaken. So the lawyer asks Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” In response to this push back Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. But he also reverses the lawyer’s question concerning who his neighbor might be and instead focuses on himself being a good neighbor. You’ll have to read this story yourself (Luke 10: 25-37). 

Would that every presidential candidate read this story for in it the very essence of what it means to be a Christian is found: Love of God and neighbor! Not just the neighbor you have lived next door to all your life, but also the neighbor whose presence you wish would disappear. Can you think of a few?

The one whom people love to blame for their problems, such as the undocumented immigrants today who are being blamed for America’s job problems, or all Muslims being blamed for the actions of the radicalized among them, or all those on welfare simply because a few abuse that system. Blaming and scapegoating are the byproducts of a small god and a small mind.

Jesus told the lawyer just how big God is: Big enough to love this great big massive world in which we live. That includes every living human being on planet earth. That includes your neighbor—whomever that neighbor might be. But more importantly if you love God with all that you have then you will become a good neighbor to those everyone else hates or wishes would go back across the border.

My prayer is for our vision of God to grow, expand, get bigger, bigger than life itself. Once we shrink God down to our own size and to our own way of thinking we have then reduced our world down to a size that will fit within the framework of our own pitifully small ways of thinking.

A small god makes for a small person, I don’t care how rich or powerful you are. A small god makes for a pitifully small nation. America can be greater than this . . . Again!

Is God too small for you in 2016?