Is Your God Too Small?

by Rev. Charles J Parsley

A Sermon given at Mount Mansfield Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on February 22, 2004

Often the churches that have called upon me to supply their pulpit, have used a lectionary. (A list of about three passages for each Sunday prepared by an ecumenical committee for use in many denominations.) Having read the choices for one such Sunday, without being able to find one that I thought would be appropriate for a Service of Worship, I remembered a book I saw and bought many years ago. I had been fascinated by its title: Is Your God too small? I wasn't very impressed with what that book had to say, but the question, "Is your god too small?" has haunted me and challenged me ever since.

Like some of the characters in the Bible, and like some of the people I've known in the pews (and pulpits) of churches; I, too, have often resisted new ideas and changes and have had to have God drag me kicking and screaming into the present and future. I've often found that my gods were too small and have had to have my ideas of God stretched to what I was afraid might be the breaking point. But the real problem seems to be that we don't allow God to stretch our minds very much at all - and certainly not to the breaking point.

Of course, having a god that is too small is what the first commandment in the Hebrew Bible, the one concerning idolatry, is all about. Some people create small or large statues and worship them. Some people do the same things with ideas of God - or creeds. The real problem of idolatry is worshiping something less than the "ultimate source of creation." (See UU Hymnal Reading 591)

For example: The Hebrew Bible says that despite God's leading the Hebrews out of slavery, they didn't trust God to lead them through the wilderness to the promised land. They complained of their hardships and began to be nostalgic about those good rich meat stews they had enjoyed in Egypt after a hard day's work as slaves. They even went so far as to create a golden calf to worship.

And in the New Testament, We are told that there was a time when Paul (or Saul as he was known at that time) thought he knew all there was to know about God. His understanding of God was well organized and reasoned. When the Christians came along with some different ideas, he felt that he had to protect God's good name by persecuting them. But on the road to Damascus, in a moment of flashing light, he discovered that the god he had worshiped and fought for was too small. To understand and worship the true God he had to stretch his ideas of God to include Jesus and the Christians.

But Paul then discovered that some of Christians had a god that was too small. One was Peter, an apostle. Until Paul challenged him and he had a vision, Peter believed that only Jews (and never gentiles) could become Christians. And so Peter discovered that he had to stretch his ideas of God .

We could go on and on talking about people in the Bible and other religious books who discovered that their ideas of God were too small and had to have their ideas of God stretched in order to come closer to understanding and worshiping the true God.

As I thought about this, I began to realize that almost any text could be discussed under the question: "Is your god to small?" And I began to think that I needed to ask myself, "Is my topic too large?"

The truth seems to be that any idol, ritual, symbol, creed, idea, or concept of God that we can come up with is too small to encompass the greatness and love of God. Our minds are at best entirely too small to grasp the totality of the ultimate source of existence.

The Hindus ... Yes, as a Christian missionary in India I discovered that I could even learn about God and religion from the adherents of other faiths. However, most of my Christian colleagues would disagree with this statement. ... The Hindus' response to anyone's idea of what God may be like is both "Yes ... and No." "Yes, God is like that, at least in part, but No, God is much more than that."

Interestingly enough, Christians often criticize the Hindus for their use of what they call idols. But a devout, educated and thoughtful Hindu would say that they do not worship their statues or believe that they are God, but rather that their statues help them to focus on and understand a part of what God really is; their statues, symbols, and myths are just the instruments that they use to focus on God. I even met a Hindu whose avatar was Jesus. He had no desire to become a Christian or to leave his Hindu temple, but he tried to live according to the teachings that Jesus gave and by which he lived. As I learned more about what he was doing, I had to admit that he succeeded better than most of us who claimed to be Christians.

The best we can do is to use symbols and figures of speech to describe God while realizing that our gods are always too small and never do justice to the totality of God's greatness and love.

I suspect that many people who don't believe in God can't believe in God because the concept of God that they were taught is a god that is too small.

I know some UU's who will not use the word, "God" but talk about the ground of being, or the power that is beyond us, or in us. Some speak of Process with a capital P or Love with a capital L. In ancient times, Jewish rabbis refused to give any name to or to use any word for God. Likewise some Christian theologians suggest that it would be better not to use the word "God" or use any other name for the power that created and maintains the universe. I'll use the word "God" this morning, but feel free to substitute your own word or concept.

Looking at the history of Christianity we find that for centuries Christians believed that God needed the Pope to define God and God's will. But Martin Luther and others decided that the Pope's god was too small and initiated the Protestant Reformation. And I think we are only true to the Protestant part of our UU heritage, when we are constantly on the alert to discover when we need to enlarge our understanding of God.

And at one time most people believed that God needed or at least wanted kings to govern, maintain morality, protect the faith, and keep order. But it turned out that this also involved too small an understanding of God's nature. They discovered that God could even work through democracies!

And until quite recently, it was assumed that God needed, wanted, or at the very least permitted some people to keep other people as slaves. Their god was too small. The writer of Amazing Grace suddenly had to enlarge his concept of God when he came to realize what a terrible thing slaving was in the eyes of God and that even a slaver could be forgiven and be used to begin to change the world's attitude towards God and slavery.

Others with a small god believed that one race was superior to another or that God loved the people of one church more than another, or that God loved the people of one country or one religion more than another.

Sometimes people have such a small god that they become convinced that their god demands that they go out and rape, torture or kill those of a different religion, or of a different branch of their own religion, or race, or nation.

Once again, we could go on and on, but I will limit myself to just a few current illustrations.

Despite the statement in Genesis which says: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" and despite Paul's statement that in Christ there is no male or female, most Christian leaders, including Paul, down through the centuries seem to have believed that men were or should be superior to women even when they were in Christ.

To this day, there are large numbers of people who believe that God can only use males to lead religious institutions, lead worship or administer sacraments! Another case of having a god that is too small.

During December 2001, (there was a newspaper report that) a group of Missouri Synod Lutheran Pastors urged their denomination to defrock a Lutheran minister for breaking denominational regulations and for unChristian behavior because he was part of an interfaith service that included Christian pastors from other denominations, a rabbi, a Muslim cleric, and readings from various world faiths. He was charged with being a syncretist, that is a person who would combine more than one faith into a single faith. They complained that this was contrary to the faith of a Christian and especially contrary to that of a Missouri Synod Lutheran Christian.

In Newsweek's Oct, 27, 2003 article "And He's Head of Intelligence?" on p.41 (This is not an exact quote since I have replaced some of his words with ...) Fareed Zakaria wrote, ''William Boykin is the general who has recently been appointed to a senior Defense Department post. Over the last two years the general has given dozens of addresses to evangelical Christian groups in which, describing his battle with a Somali (Muslim) warlord, he has said: 'I knew that my God was bigger than his God. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.' Islam was founded, in part as a reaction against idol worship and rigorously prohibits any graven images. "When have you seen any statues of Muhammad?"

It appears that the general did not know much about the Muslims' faith and that the general's god is much too small.

And to this day, many people believe that God can only be thought of as a male, - perhaps an old man with a beard who sits upon his throne up in the clouds. And After all didn't Jesus tell his followers to think of God as our heavenly father?

For me to think of God as Father is very meaningful, for I had a wonderful loving father on earth. He was not perfect, but it is easy for me to think that God is like my father only better. But as a student in seminary, I did some work in a mental hospital. One day while trying to explain to a patient that he had a Father in heaven who loved him, I was astounded to see him become very agitated. Fortunately, I had already established a good relationship with him, and he was able to tell me why my statement so disturbed him. As a child, he had been afraid of his earthly father who had abused him and the other members of the family. To tell him to think of God as Father was to tell him to think of God as a threatening, dreadful being whom he could only hate.

Unfortunately at that point my God was too small for me to help him understand that there was a loving God who wanted to reach out to him and love him ... like a mother.

Later in India, I discovered an Indian Christian hymn which talked about God as Mother. I questioned an Indian friend about this who told me that for him and others who had grown up with Hinduism he could only believe in God's mercy and forgiveness, if God were at least at times a loving mother.

He said that in his experience, if the prodigal returned home, he would get no mercy or even recognition from his father who would have long since pronounced him dead. But if he waited until his father left the house, his mother might accept him.

But I was not ready for this. My god was too small to take this in. I suggested that in some ways, God might be like a mother, but that the Bible taught that God was our Father. But he suggested that while the Bible usually taught that God was like a father, it sometimes said that God was like a mother; and that if we could call God, "Father," we should also be able to call God, "Mother." (- That God was like mother in the same way that God was like father.) He also explained that in Hinduism, God was seen as being revealed in many ways: as a lion, as a man, as a woman, as a stone, as a cloud, and even as a being that was half man and half woman. I was being challenged to enlarge my understanding of God. And now I barely flinch when someone uses the pronoun "She" when speaking of God.

Later, while I was the pastor of a Baptist church, I discovered a hymn in their hymnal entitled, "Like as a Mother" based on the passage in Isaiah 66:13 that describes God as being like a mother. And since that time I have discovered similar passages in other parts of the Bible. Not many, but enough to convince me that the god I worshiped as a child was much too small. We need to grow not only physically, but spiritually as well.

At one time I also had a problem accepting homosexuals. Many of my buddies in the army during WWII believed that homosexuals were for beating up. Very gradually, I was persuaded that if God loves all people, God must love homosexuals, especially since recent studies indicate that they do not choose to be homosexuals but are born that way - created that way by God. Who are we to deny love and reject those whom God has created?

But more convincing to me than all the arguments I have read or heard was the experience I had when a close friend and respected Christian leader told a group of us in confidence that he had discovered that he was a homosexual. I was profoundly shocked, but I couldn't turn against my friend or reject him. Actually, I continued wrestling with this for some time, but gradually became convinced that I needed to enlarge my understanding of God in this area.

Is God too small? No, of course not! But our ideas about God and God's love are often too small if we have stopped studying and trying to enlarge our ideas of God. This is especially true if we stopped while we were still children. We need constantly to increase our understanding of God and God's love and to realize that this topic is too large for a single sermon or even for a whole lifetime.