This spring’s
bombing at the Boston Marathon, the earlier shootings in Newtown, CT, and our
society’s collective reactions to them, sent me back recently to a book by the
English author J. B. Phillips entitled Your
God Is Too Small.
Writing in the
50's, Phillips, a clergyman and scholar, surveyed a world wracked by two
decades of economic depression and world war, and concluded that the spiritual
complaints of many persons were the result of their believing in a “small” or
at least “inadequate” God. Most,
he noted, were attempting to navigate the trials and challenges of adult life
with an understanding of God they once acquired in Sunday School, but never
updated as they grew older and had to deal with the complications and
complexities of life. A concept of
God that is helpful to an elementary school child, living in a reasonably safe
environment, is simply not adequate to an adult facing unemployment, war, or
terminal illness.
Phillips
identified a collection of lesser gods that seemed to reside in the minds of
parishioners or students as a prelude to his description of the God we know in
Christianity. Among the diminutive
pantheon were the Great Disappointer, the Grand Old Man, the Parental Hangover,
the Pale Galilean, and the Surly Judge.
Rereading these pages, I noticed that some of these lesser gods are still
alive and well, though others have arisen to reflect changing times. In fact, it struck me that the time may
be right to revisit Phillip’s insights, possibly under the title “Your God Is
Still Too Small”. Let’s visit two
of our contemporary micro deities.
One of our
era’s more prevalent could be called The Indulgent-And-Protective
Grandparent. In keeping with the
spirit of the times, the Grandparent may be of either gender, infinitely
understanding, and tolerant of our personal idiosyncrasies. Above all else, the Grandparent is
comfortable to have around. This
benevolent spirit may have house rules, but knows full well that no one is
going to keep them, so as long as the violations are not mean-spirited, nothing
will be said.
Protective as
well as indulgent, the Grandparent is usually imagined to be “watching over”
us, and if we happen to get into a nasty scrape, we look to this protective
quality to get us out unscathed.
The
Grandparent is adequate to sunny days and warm weather. When life is moving forward on an even
keel the sense of this indulgent, protective presence can be reassuring. However, it is not fit for the trials
of life. I once visited a person
dying of lung cancer, still chain-smoking, and asking with apparent sincerity,
“How can God let this happen?” The
individual whose evenings always included a few highballs, and blames God for
liver failure, and the adulterer who believes God should “make” a wounded
spouse come back, are invoking the same Indulgent and Protective Grandparent,
who should be willing to overlook behavior and fix up consequences.
Another in the
pantheon is The Personal Bodyguard.
One thing we moderns crave is absolute physical security. My personal guess is that this craving
has grown in direct proportion to the modern world’s loss of faith in an
existence beyond this life. If
what we have now is all we get, then it makes sense to want as much as we can
have for as long as we can have it.
In such a world, what gods there are ought to be in the business of
making sure we get every possible minute.
Followers look
to the Personal Bodyguard to fend off everything from tornados and floods, to
random violence and directed attacks.
Such a hero-god is expected to make distinctions between good people and
bad, as well as between adults who have had a good life and children and youth
who are just getting started.
Because all people die, believers in the Bodyguard are stuck with the
idea that each death or injury is the direct result of the Bodyguard deciding
not to protect this or that person.
If that is what we expect God to do, it is inevitable that persons who
believe in the Bodyguard are always and everywhere raising the plaintive cry,
“Why?”
Both the
Grandparent and the Bodyguard are based on the assumption that God is
benevolent, and desires good for people.
So far, so good - Christianity agrees. But both ideas fly against the clearest imaginable cautions
of scripture. To those who want a
god of endless indulgence, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to
abolish the law and the prophets.
I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)
When people
complained that innocent lives were lost in the collapse of a tower, he
answered that such disasters befall good and evil people alike (Luke
13:4). He told another crowd that
rain (which can be either a blessing or a flood) falls on all regardless of who
they are (Matthew 5:45). These are
not isolated proof-texts, but representative examples of what Jesus
taught. His message, in other words,
was that we live in a dangerous world where good and bad things happen to all
sorts of people. Violations of the
physical or moral laws do have consequences, but equally important, there are
bad experiences, which are neither the punishment nor the failure of God.
How many more
lesser gods are common to our time? And how can we describe the real God? Send along your own nominations by
email:
tospeakofgod@gmail.com.
Ferreting out these poorly defined, but inadequate substitutes is a step
toward reflecting seriously on the fully adequate God revealed to us in Jesus
Christ. Stay tuned – more
thoughts, perhaps yours, will appear from time to time in future posts.
Howard
MacMullen
©May, 2013
Note: Your
God is Too Small, by J.B. Phillips, can still be found, and is even
available for Kindle.
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