OUR SMALL GODS: PART 2

Continuing J.B. Phillips' list of destructive images we may have for God, we come across the following:

God-in-a-Box

This has got to be one of the most common ways in which Christians falsely characterize God. Just read or listen to any teachings by the Prosperity Gospel crowd if you don't believe me. You will be told that God wants you to be healthy and wealthy; all you need to do is find a promise somewhere in the Bible and “Name it; Claim it.”

Interestingly, when Phillips wrote Your God is Too Small, the above heresies were not around, or at least not at all to the extent that they are now. And so he meant something entirely different when he used “God-in-a box.” He was referring to the way each denomination gives the impression that they have safely locked God up in a box of their own design and that one must come to Him only on their own terms. That also is a total misrepresentation of the vastness of God and His kingdom.

The Jewish religious leaders we encounter in the New Testament are a prime example of what Phillips was talking about. They had so captured God in their box that it was impossible for them to recognize Him when He stepped out of it and confronted them. And this attitude does prevail in much of Christendom today. Just one such example is the way that many evangelical churches even label the speaking in tongues encountered in Pentacostal and charismatic churches as demon possession simply because their theologies have ruled it out of bounds for Christians. I don't see a whole lot of difference between that attitude and that of the Pharisees and scribes who ascribed Jesus' miracles as coming from Satan because they occurred on the Sabbath.

Managing Director

This is best explained by simply quoting from Phillips: “There is a conception of God which seems at first sight to be very lofty and splendid, but which proves paradoxically enough on examination to be yet another of the 'too small' ideas. It is to think that the God who is responsible for the terrifying vastness of the Universe cannot possibly be interested in the lives of the minute specks of consciousness which exist on this insignificant planet.”

C.S. Lewis also takes aim at this concept in one of his essays by asking, “Since when is an elephant more important than a person simply because he is bigger?” If God was “small” enough to care for the inhabitants of our supposedly insignificant planet to send His Only Son, then He certainly can care for each one of us individually as well.

There was a man in our home Bible study who was to all appearances a Christian and totally orthodox in his beliefs. But he admitted to me once that he really couldn't get into the concept of intercessory prayer since he found it quite difficult to believe that God would or could listen to each one of us. I must admit that I sympathized with his struggle since I have seen many prayers over the years go apparently unanswered. But on the other hand, I have lived long enough to also see a number of personal prayers answered, sometimes in quite a miraculous way. And, notably, the most strikingly miraculous occurrences happened three times in a church setting in which there was a concerted prayer vigil held for someone or there was some sort of prayer network in place.

Second-Hand God

This is another case where J.B. Phillips' definition of a term does not really match up with my own. As Phillips explains it, we each have a very limited perspective on life, which we use to formulate our ideas concerning the nature of God, or even whether He exists. And so we supplement our own experiences with those of others in novels, television shows, or movies. The problem, of course, is that those fictional examples are shaped by others who have their own mindsets which they use to promulgate their views to others.

To my mind, his idea of what a second-hand God looks like is not nearly as pervasive as the many examples I have seen of those who experience God Himself only through beliefs and traditions of others close to them, such as our parents or even our nation. We say that we are Christian, and fully believe it, because (a) our parents were Christians, (b) we were baptized in a church as an infant, (c) we live in a Christian nation, or (d) we must be Christian by default since we know we are not Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist.

There is even a subtler form of this syndrome. That is to brag on our pastor and what a wonderful, godly man he is or try to impress people with how large a congregation our church has. In these sort of cases, we are really confessing that our own faith in God is mainly reliant on the faith of others and we are hoping it will rub off on us somehow.

Perennial Grievance

“To some people the mental image of God is a kind of blur of disappointment” because He has let us down in some manner or other by not living up to our expectations. And yet some people continue to worship him grudgingly. Phillips adds, “To recall God's unfaithfulness appears to give them the same ghoulish pleasure that others find in recounting the grisly details of their 'operation.'”

My own experience with others indicates that most of those people cease altogether to worship God rather than sticking it out. They come up with the wonderfully illogical conclusion – “I don't believe in God because I am mad at God.” It is like a memorable line from an obscure John Wayne movie in which a woman has just cooked a leg of lamb for his dinner. When he refuses to eat it, she asks him why. His reply is, “I don't like lamb because I have never eaten lamb.” I don't know why that suddenly came to mind other than I thought it was a particularly funny line.

Pale Galilean

J.B. Phillips took this title from a line in a poem by Swinburne that goes: “Thou hast conquered, pale Galilean, The world has grown grey from Thy breath.” Another way of describing this syndrome comes from a humorous description of some Christian denominations as having the sneaking suspicion that somewhere and somehow people are still having fun and it has to be stopped. What a twisted image for followers of the Christ who ate and drank with sinners.

I experienced this attitude even in the tiny start-up church I attended decades ago in upstate New York. We had one “elder” who had attended seminary, and he became irate when he learned that a handful of the members in our congregation were meeting at the house of one of them in the evening to sing favorite Gospel songs around the piano. He came to me as “chairman” of the church and demanded that I stop them immediately. I never could figure out from him exactly what his problem was. But my sneaking suspicion is that he just couldn't stand others having fun, even if it was in the name of Christ.

Projected Image

Sigmund Freud in Moses and Monotheism explained that Moses grew up without his biological father, and the Pharaoh was not an adequate substitute. Thus, he invented a “super-father” to replace the one he never had, and that is how monotheism was born. C.S. Lewis skewers this theory in one of his Narnia Chronicles when some of the protagonists find themselves lost in a cave lit only by a dim phosphorescence on the walls. They encounter some cave dwellers there who have never left the cave in their life and try to explain to them what the outside is like and how bright the sun is. One of the “wise” elder cavemen explains patiently to them that they obviously are yearning for something brighter than the cave walls and have projected that desire on some non-existent bright ball.

Phillips says, “A harsh and puritanical society will project its dominant qualities and probably postulate a hard and puritanical god. A lax and easy-going society will probably produce a god with about as much moral authority as Father Christmas [i.e. Santa Claus to us].” And we see the same today in the United States where there are two competing “gods,” each exhibiting qualities largely drawn from the beliefs of the two dominant political parties.