God Is Bigger than I Think

Making Room in our Minds

I think the God we worship says a lot about our hopes and dreams for ourselves and the world. Indeed, the crux of religion is this: how does God speak in our time. To whom does God speak? What difference does it make if God speaks.

Years ago, after the holocaust and World War II, some philosophers believed God was dead. After all, it was argued, how could so much pain be allowed by any kind of God? Extreme realism, cynicism and analysis forced the human race to an untenable conclusion that God was mortal after all. Later, this view died away of its own weight, because people were incessant in their demand for hope. People now reasoned, “hope can be found even in the microcosms of every day life.” The result has been a variety of views of “God Lite.” At times, all this God talk has turned the Creator and Savior into an illusion—like the human population is making God into that for which we hope.

Perhaps this difficulty was the result of our minds being too small to grasp that God is beyond what we make Him/Her to be. We think, “Well, if thus and so is happening, and God isn’t responding, God must be irrelevant.” Rather, I think, we make the error that God has only one way of doing things, one way of appearing and one way of being described. (We also make God our own scapegoat giving us good reason to be passive and do nothing on ecological and human to human issues.)

The book Isaiah has a wonderful passage in chapter 40 which describes God to be worshiped—and that God does not have a mono-personality: that God description has two personalities. The first is creator and the second is redeemer.

Isaiah 40:25-31

25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

God is not dead because of what we believe or don’t. God is not dead because of the bad news we see and read and atrocities humans force upon each other and the planet. God lives because of what God is: creator and redeemer, among other descriptions. Biblically, the creator God is our redeemer is reflected in the Exodus, the nation Israel under David, Jesus and the disciples, Jesus and Jerusalem, and Jesus and the world. That the creator God is also redeemer means matter matters.

The biblical truth is that God is creator and redeemer and is unwilling to let go. The promise of a redeemed planet continues through all creation, including us.

Blessings on you this day!
--Fred