Your God Is Too Small

I finished the subject book by J B Phillips before our trip and failed to blog on it. It is a book I would highly recommend to Christian and Non-Christian alike. As the title would lead you to believe it goes through a number of "models" that humans have to visualize God, and why each is inadequate. Naturally, they all MUST be hugely inadequate. Our finite physical brains hold very little information about even this physical universe, let alone anything close to enough to somehow fully perceive an infinite God that is beyond the material.

A whole series of models including resident policeman, parental hangover, grand old man, meek-and-mild, absolute perfection, pale Galilean, etc are covered. All are well done, but given my fundamentalist youth, I especially liked "Absolute Perfection" with the discussion of Christ saying "Be ye perfect". Ever met any perfect Christians? I liked this section; "The modern high-pressure Christian of certain circles would like to impose perfection of one hundred percent as a set of rules to be immediately enforced, instead of as a shining ideal to be faithfully pursued. His short cut, in effect, makes the unimaginative satisfied before he ought to be and drives the imaginative to despair."

Many fundamentalists make Christianity a game of on-upmanship on rules. "I don't listen to rock music" ... "Well, I don't watch TV" ... "I read my bible an hour every day". Does God appreciate our efforts? Certainly, to the extent that they are efforts of response and we don't believe that we have improved our position because of them, but do them out of simple love. I like to think of our efforts as artwork done by a 3-year old for their parent. Nothing could be loved more, but nothing is farther from actual valuable art. So too the "sins" of the 3-year old -- the only ones that make us jump out of our skin are the ones like dashing away into traffic that could harm them. Naturally, like all nice little human models, mine is as childish as any other, and probably worse.

The bottom line is that those in the most danger are those that are sure they have arrived. Jesus attacked the Pharisees with the most bitter scorn. The "arrived / correct / certain" religious, atheist, or some other stripe, are "the rich man" and in grave danger. "...it is a mistake to think that Pharisaism disappeared after the death of Christ. The danger of such a system, and the reason that Christ attacked it so violently, is that its values are artificial. The proud and correct feel "right with God" just when they are not, and the sensitive humble man feels hopeless and overburdened for the wrong reasons."

I appreciated the end of the book, but it is hard to summarize. I liked this section: "Now if it is true that God is both Truth and Love it will readily be seen that the greatest sins will be unreality, hypocrisy, deceit, lying, or whatever else we choose to call sins against truth, and self-love, which makes fellowship with other people and their proper treatment impossible. Forgiveness must then consist in a restoration to Reality, i.e. Truth and Love."

My "youthful religious scars" were of the "if you aren't good enough, then you can't REALLY be a Christian, so get ready to burn" kind, so those passages spoke to me. The book goes after people in the "once saved always saved" ditch as well ... find someone that grew up Unitarian if you want that review!

The book is a small book, only 140 pages, and very readable. It is certain to "expand your God". I am often struck that a major part of wisdom is the recognition of what we don't know. Ignorance is often far too confident.