OUR SMALL GODS: PART 1

J.B. Phillips is best known for writing one of the first popular Bible paraphrases. But he also wrote a book in the 1960's titled Your God Is Too Small. In that slim volume he briefly described a number of inadequate, and even destructive, ways we have of picturing God in our minds. I would like to review his descriptions of these “small gods” along with my own comments concerning them. But you might want to consider purchasing this book for yourself. I have found that it makes the great basis for a series of Sunday school classes or home Bible studies that is very suitable for starting meaningful group discussions.

One word of caution before I begin: there is probably some truth behind each one of these conceptions of God, but “some” is not at all the same as “all.” The first half of Phillips' book concerns “unreal gods” – those that can actually be quite destructive to a true faith. He follows this with a prolonged description of how we can re-capture an adequate view of God, but I will only deal with the first half of his book.

Resident Policeman

By this designation, Phillips means that an overdeveloped conscience caused by one's early upbringing or later environment is sometimes the deciding factor in our view of God as someone who is always present, looking at us and just waiting for us to fail. Sort of like Santa Claus who knows when you are naughty and when you are nice.

One example I can think of in that regard is that of the famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock. When he was a small boy and had committed some minor infraction of his parents' rules, Hitchcock's father convinced the local constabulary to lock Alfred up in jail for a short amount of time in order to teach him a lesson. The lifelong lesson that instilled in the director can be seen in most of his movies, many of which have the plot of an innocent man being wrongly accused of a crime and trying to clear his name.

Another example, this time from the world of literature, is Mark Twain's masterpiece Huckleberry Finn. Huck helps a slave to escape but he is wracked with guilt the whole time feeling that his act will surely condemn him to Hell. Phillip offers the case of the German population under the Nazis, during which they were indoctrinated with the idea that helping to capture Jews was their patriotic duty.

The above instances serve to demonstrate that relying on an overdeveloped or societally warped conscience can have drastic consequences on all aspects of our lives including how we view God and attempt to carry out his will on earth.

Parental Hangover

Throughout the New Testament, God is referred to as God the Father, or just “the Father.” That image causes many people, such as myself, absolutely no problem at all since we were raised by parents who were wise, loving and caring. But what about those who grew up in a dysfunctional home environment with a missing or abusive father to shape their image of what a father was like? Every time they run across that same image, they can only picture our Heavenly Father as having the same negative characteristics.

As Phillips says, “But if the child is afraid (or worse still, afraid and feeling guilty because he is afraid) of his own father, the chances are that his Father in Heaven will appear to him as a fearful Being.” It is interesting that the “Hell and brimstone” brand of preaching is most effective on those who were raised by strict parents since it is quite easy to reawaken feelings of guilt in them. The image of God as “father” should not be abandoned. But, as Phillips points out, “Experience shows that it is only the mature Christian man who can begin to see a little of the “size” of his Father.”

Grand Old Man

I have lived long enough now to have had one of my grandchildren say to me, “I guess people of your generation would probably think that.” Of course, that is a politely dismissive way of really saying that I am so old that I am totally out of touch with today's reality and therefore my ideas on any subject at all can be easily ignored as out-of-date.

I don't really mind being dismissed in such a way since I can always come back with some comment about the well accepted concept of the arrogance of youth. But when the idea of “old” meaning “old fashioned” is applied to God Himself, that is not such an innocent and forgivable offense. It is, Phillips says, natural for children to picture God as an old man with a beard since all of the Sunday school stories involving him happened thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, that same concept often lingers with us into adulthood.

During an adult Sunday school class I was teaching, I once carried out a variation on a simple exercise Phillips suggested. I asked the class members to close their eyes and listen to some descriptions of God that I would give them. They were told to raise their hand with each description if they agreed with it. So I began with some sentences such as, “God is love,” “God is eternal,” God is all-powerful,” etc. and then I said, “God understands Einstein's Theory of Relativity.” Whereas each of the earlier statements brought about an immediate raising of hands, when I got to this last question there was nothing but confusion on peoples' faces with one or two of them reluctantly raising their hands at last.

Most of us, I am afraid, still have that childhood image of God as a kindly but very elderly grandfather whose knowledge base is unfortunately limited to somewhere back in the early 20^th century at best.

Meek-and-Mild

It is not only children in Sunday school who have sometimes grown up with this syrupy sweet image of Jesus, but adults also. However, all it would take to dispel this picture would be a random thumbing through the Gospel accounts to see Jesus as a more full-bodied, “manly” person who had no trouble confronting hostile audiences including a whole synagogue of Jews, the highest and most educated Jewish authorities in the land, money changers in the temple, and even demonic forces. We have in effect emasculated Jesus if we see him in any way less that this.

As C.S. Lewis says of his Christ-figure Aslan, “Aslan is not a tame lion.”

Absolute Perfection

You may wonder what in the world is wrong with this image as one to hold for God. Really there is nothing wrong with it. But the problem comes in when we start to think that a Perfect God would not be satisfied with anything we do that falls short of that perfection. And this sort of thinking can lead us to (a) total paralysis in all that we do or (b) to a workaholic attitude that ends in an emotional breakdown.

Phillips reminds us of the Parable of the Prodigal Son and concludes with the words: “God is truly Perfection, but He is no Perfectionist.”

Heavenly Bosom

Psychiatrists have on occasion criticized Christians for using God as a crutch to escape from the harsh realities of daily life. And there is a germ of truth in that accusation. We can view God rightly as a place of refuge to which we flee when we are overwhelmed. But to never move from that comforting position has the potential of stifling our Christian life entirely. As Phillips memorably puts it concerning these people, “So long as they imagine that God is saying 'Come unto Me' when He is really saying 'Go out in My Name,' they are preventing themselves from ever putting on spiritual muscle...”