God boxes (May 8, 2006)

I'm reading a book by Donald Miller (author of "Blue Like Jazz") called "Through Painted Deserts" - all about this very long trip he took across country. It's kind of a "you have to leave home to find home" kind of thing. Pretty good so far. In the first chapter he's talking about how he's having this crisis of faith, really for the first time in his life. He's tired of asking "how" questions, and tired of the answers he is being given. Even the "why" questions aren't being answered satisfactorily, in his opinion, and he begins to feel a desperate need for something BIGGER.

He looks up at night and sees the stars, he looks around during the day and sees the world - all of it existing as though it - the cosmos - knows something we, as humans, do not... as though it is infinate and our human matters are not. And suddenly the idea of a God that has given us pat answers and step-by-step "how to..." guides isn't doing it anymore. In fact, that kind of God CAN'T do it anymore. God has to be bigger than that, bigger than our mundane concerns, bigger than our finite needs, wants and worries... and "bigger than our religious ideas."

BIGGER THAN OUR RELIGIOUS IDEAS.

We have been putting God into a box for as long we have been in existence. We have been limiting God to fit into the religious ieas we have created. This is how we control God. Because we HAVE to control God. If we don't control God, it means we don't control anything. We can't have that. By formulating theologies, doctrines, and dogmas we have created "God." A kind of God that we want to believe it, or can believe in. We have created a God that isn't bigger than our religious ideas, a God that does what we want.

Don't believe me? It's there. You can see it every time someone condemns a gay couple because they're living outside of "God's law." You can see it every time violence is justified as being "God's will." You can see it every time someone is denied communion at the altar.Even when something bad happens and we say "God is in control," or admit that we don't understand but we know that God does, we still aren't admitting that, not really. Because, as theists, we believe in a certain kind of God and in a certain kind of hope, in a certain kind of redemption. Even though things might be crappy now, we know goodness with prevail later. We know this because the God we believe in has told us so. Really, we know this because we have created our God this way, and have created this God to tell us such things.

When we say "let go and let God," we're not saying anything of real consequence, are we? We're not letting God do anything. We're letting the God we have created do something. We haven't given up control of anything. We've still got it.

That's the problem: control. We humans need control. We need it so badly that - either consciously or subconsciously - we have tried our hardest throughout history to harness the power of God and to encompass an understanding of what is ultimately infinitely beyond anything we could ever hope to understand, much less control.

God exists. God is with us - and I say this knowing full well it is a religious idea I very much want to believe (want to be true... need to be true). But too often in the world God is used as a pawn, as a trump card, as a tool in our plights to further our own agendas. When will we realize that God is not here to serve us - but rather we are here to serve God? When will we realize that God isn't something we can control?

The Christian church has been guilty of manipulating and using God to further its own agenda for centuries. We need to stop this. It's terrifying to admit that there is a higher power out there who may or may not behave how we want this Being to behave, who may or may not have the same values we do.

Luckily, there is Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus was God on earth - showing and us how we are supposed to live, showing us what life is all about. And I have my ideas as to what that means, but you know what, I am going to try really hard not to put God in a box anymore. I need God to be bigger than I am. I need this more than I need control. Because if God really is only as big as we make God out to be, we - as humans - really are in control...and that's scary.

It's good to have beliefs. It's good to have beliefs about the nature and character of God. I would even go so far as to say it's necessary. But it's also necessary to recognize our finite nature, and that these beliefs aren't the whole picture. In fact we will never have the whole picture, not while we're alive and human, because we can't. We're not able to. We can see glimpses and we can do our best to understand those glimpses and live by those understandings, but we must always be aware of the fact that God is GOD and we are not. God is bigger than we are. God is bigger than the understandings we have. God is bigger than the boxes we have made.

I need God to be bigger than the box I have made.