OUR SMALL GODS: PART 3

There is a final miscellaneous grouping of “small” concepts for God found in J.B. Phillips' book Your God is Too Small. It includes the following:

God in a Hurry

In our ever-increasing pace of life we often become impatient with anything or anyone who stands in our way to accomplishing what must be done NOW, without delay. And this applies even to noble goals such as reaching the world for Christ. The problem is that God's time-table is not our own.

This is not a new problem either. Just witness Peter's response to those who had become so impatient waiting for the Lord's return that they actually began to doubt that it would ever happen. “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness...” (II Peter 3:8-9 NRSV)

God for the Elite

By this description, Phillips meant that we often look up to certain “super Christians” who seem to belong to a higher class of believers than the rank and file churchgoer. They can deliver more lofty prayers, have a better scholarly grasp of spiritual truths that we can, and may even claim to get direct revelations from God through visions. From observing such people, we could easily get the mistaken idea that God is only a true God to certain believers, and certainly not to us in the same exalted manner.

God of Bethel

“There are quite a number of religious people who might fairly be said, if the truth be told, to be more at home with Jehovah than with Jesus Christ....These are the people who see religion as a contract: they obey certain rules and God will faithfully look after them and their interests...They prefer the letter to the spirit and definite commandments to vague principles...Such people have not appreciated the revolutionary character of God's invasion of the world in Christ...”

In a way, they are the modern equivalent of the Judaizers of the New Testament, trying to hold on to all the rules and regulations given to the Jews while still claiming that they are Christians. Or, like a small group that for a while years ago infiltrated the present church I am attending and set up a sort of parallel congregation which tried to remain true to all the Old Testament observances, teaching gentile Christians that to be true believers that they needed to worship in the “authentic” way.

God without Godhead

I will quote Phillips again at this point: “This conception is one of the most 'enlightened' and 'modern.' God is completely de-personalized and becomes the Ultimate Bundle of Highest Values...It is manifestly impossible for any except the most intellectual to hold in his mind (let alone worship and serve) a God who is no more than what we think to be the highest values raised to the nth degree.”

Some of the Transcendentalist and Deists active especially in the early centuries of the United States could be said to fit into this category. And, as defined above, it is not surprising that these were more philosophical than theological movements. Today's spiritual children of this sort of thought have pretty much abandoned the theological aspects entirely.

Gods by any other Name

In the church where I grew up, and perhaps in many churches today, whenever the subject of inadequate gods was taught from the pulpit, it always took the form of enumerating the many “idols” we worship in place of God Almighty, whether it be riches, fame, sex, comfort, etc. etc. And there is certainly nothing wrong with pointing out those distractions from true faith that we still pursue today. It was John Calvin who memorably stated, “The human mind is an idol factory.”

But those “idols” are seldom called “gods” by those who in fact worship them. By contrast, the various small gods Phillips lists do go by that name, and that can be far more insidious an error because the believers in those really feel that they are being good Christians and worshiping the only and true God. It is often harder to get them to admit their error than those who would at least never consciously admit that money, etc. was their conception of the Deity.