“Phenomenal cosmic power–itty bitty living space.” You might remember this great line from Disney’s Aladdin. It seems to me that much of western Christianity sees God in this way: It speaks of an omnipotent God but creates such a tight theological box for him to exist in that you could carry him around in your pocket, just taking him out when you need him.
A primary way in which people keep God boxed in is through defining God’s attributes. For example, if we say that one of God’s attributes is that he is just, and we define just in a certain way, so our view of God is trapped by our definition of justice. All of a sudden, God is demanding human sacrifice because we’ve all offended God. So, God the Father sacrifices Jesus instead to save only an elect few of us, but justice still demands that the rest burn in a lake of fire. It’s like the God some people believe in says, “I’d really like to save all of you (it says so in the Bible), but I’m holy and just so unfortunately I can’t.” To me, this means sin and evil are only partially defeated. My God is much bigger than this.
Another way we box God in is by making up silly rules, like when we say that God can’t look on sin. First, we have to deal with the fact that Jesus is God and looked on plenty of sin. Second, the claim is that because God the Father can’t look on sin, on the cross the Father has to turn away from Jesus. Here we have the problem of our little belief splitting God in two. Not only does this limit our view of God, it’s just embarrassingly wrong. Third, the whole concept of God not being able to look upon sin has so many problems with how God watches over humanity that it’s just ridiculous. And this is only one of those bizarre little theologies we’ve come up with.
It’s time to take God out of the box
The western church is so full of bad little teachings, like original sin, total depravity, penal substitutionary atonement, double predestination, and all that end times nonsense that it’s no wonder that so many have lost sight of how big God really is. All most people can see are those theological boxes that represent God. The apostle Paul seemed to be working hard in his letters to keep cultural, ethnic, and theological boxes from forming, but unfortunately even some cultural and philosophical boxes formed in the East over time.
In reality, God has never fit inside of your box, or in your pocket, or even in your church or your denomination. It’s just that for some of you, that’s all that you can see because you’ve never been shown the bigger God that is outside of all that. It’s time to get rid of your genie-like view of God who lives in a little space and grants you wishes when you need them and find the God who defies your definitions and exceeds your expectations.
Unlimited power, unlimited living space.
