Making God too small
4 July 2004 – Martin Camroux: "Without a tremor of hesitation they declare the mind of the Almighty... On a good day he will find them a parking place for their car..."
Some years ago, the late senator Thomas Benton was asked about the most difficult aspect of being a United States senator. His answer was interesting. He said the hardest thing to deal with was the frustrating fact that his constituents had what he called a "bad case of the simples"! That is, they wanted to reduce complex questions to easy simplicities.
I wonder if there isn't a religious equivalent of a "bad case of the simples". Paul seems to have the met the problem in Corinth. Exasperated, he says, "Do not be childish in your thinking, my friends. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be grown up."
One of the worst forms of the religious simples is making God too small. There are Christians who treat God in that sort of way. They seem to imagine they can see straight into his mind with total clarity. There doesn't seem to be a question about him they can't answer without absolute certainty. Without a tremor of hesitation they declare the mind of the Almighty on this question or that. Everything that is to know about God they know. On a good day he will find them a parking place for their car.
I recently read about a man who wanted a revelation from God. "I want a revelation," he told his minister. "I want God to speak to me simple and straight."
Finally his minister said to him, "The next time it rains, go outside, look up into the heavens, and ask God for a revelation."
A few days later, the heavens opened. There was torrential rain. The man came back to the minister utterly sodden, dripping water everywhere. "I followed your advice," he said. "I stood in the rain for over an hour, looked up in the skies asking for a revelation from God. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. The rain pelted down my face, the water ran down my neck, I just felt ignorant and stupid."
The minister replied, "What greater revelation do you need?"
I hope most of us don't need to stand in the rain to realise how ignorant we are in this complex universe. If we ever even begin to imagine that we have fully understood the nature of the creator and sustainer of the universe, then it's time we grew up.
My daughter came up with something profoundly wise the other day. I was unable to answer some question that she had. "I don't know, dear," I said. "In fact, I don't think I know anything."
"Daddy," she said, "If you know you don't know anything, you do know something."
She was quite right. When it comes to God, if you know you don't know everything, you're learnt something profoundly important. So whatever you do, don't make God too small. He is bigger than you can even begin to imagine.
Martin Camroux is the convener of the Church and Society committee of the United Reformed Church in the UK. He won the Times Preacher of the Year award in 2001.
