Shrinking God

How do you react to someone who is clearly in the wrong? Maybe you take the offending person aside and deal with them one on one. Maybe you talk to another friend first and tell them what’s bothering you. Maybe you call out the person in front of everybody, or maybe you avoid the issue all together. But one thing is for certain: at some point, we are all faced with someone who we truly believe is in the wrong, and at that time we need to decide how we will react.

What is interesting to observe is how people react when they believe that God is in the wrong.

I am talking primarily about the Christian God (although the following also applies to most monotheistic religions and their respective Gods), which makes the concept of God being wrong rather taboo. However, it also makes it quite popular. Comedians such as Tim Minchin, Nick Offerman, Bo Burnham, and Aziz Ansari talk about it. Science greats such as Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye all allude to it. Political icons, pop singers, op-ed writers, and FaceBook vigilantes all display a strong personal morality, and God doesn’t always end up on their good side. The result is that we end up with a bunch of quotes, statements, and views that all amount to roughly the same thing: “If that’s what God says, then God is wrong, and we either need to ignore that part of God or get rid of him all together.” Bring up homosexuality and the Bible in any online forum, and you’ll pretty quickly see what I’m talking about.

The people making these statements come across as very bold and edgy, despite the fact that this is actually a fairly popular view. It’s also not new at all. The Bible itself is full of people questioning, challenging, and doubting God. One of the most famous is Job, whose story is recounted in the book bearing his name. Job was stricken with countless misfortunes, and he eventually challenged God, called him out, and questioned his justice. Here is an excerpt from God’s reply:

“Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.
“Would you discredit my justice?
    Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God’s,
    and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
    and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
    look at all who are proud and bring them low,
look at all who are proud and humble them,
    crush the wicked where they stand.
Bury them all in the dust together;
    shroud their faces in the grave.
Then I myself will admit to you
    that your own right hand can save you.”
- Job 40:7-14

Those are some harsh words. Job had at least as much right to question God as any of the people mentioned above. And yet God makes it clear how far that sense of moral indignation towards God will get him.

The problem is that Job, like many others today, treated God as he would treat another person. He respected God up until something happened that didn’t agree with his personal sense of morality, at which point he decided to address this God who, from his perspective, was clearly in the wrong. God’s response was to simply remind Job where he stood in relation to the Divine. Job, like us, thought his voice was loud. God reminded him what a voice that can rouse thunder actually sounds like. Job, like us, sought to wrap himself in justice. God reminded him who can dispense true justice. Job, like us, claimed to be able to rid himself of evil. God reminded him how powerless he was to do so.

To help clarify the true scale of the matter, I will borrow a metaphor from season 5 of the TV show Supernatural. Imagine you have just sprayed some disinfectant on your kitchen counter and you’re currently wiping it down. All of a sudden, a bacterium jumps off of your hand and onto the counter, looks you in the eye, and resolutely yells “You think you can just tell me where to stand after committing mass genocide like that? Well I for one will not listen to a murderer like you!” How would you react? (For the sake of the metaphor, assume this is still the same world we live in, not some parallel universe where bacterium are sentient; this is a one-time, one-way, anomalous communication). Would you sit there and ponder your actions? Would you think to yourself “Why should I wield such control over this counter? Who am I to say what can be on it and what can’t?” Chances are you would not. Most likely, you would simply spray some more disinfectant and wipe away that snarky bacterium without a second thought. That is but a hint of the sense of scale we are talking about when God chooses to interact with man.

We don’t talk like this much anymore. We reserve discussion of God’s enormity and wrath for the Old Testament and the Great Awakening. We tend to focus more on that carpenter’s son who was more our size. Him we can relate to. At least if we disagree with him, its not much different from disagreeing with our neighbor. But that’s precisely where we go wrong. We focus so much on the relatable and relational God that we forget the powerful and eternal God. We shrink God down to our size where we can debate with Him and make Him come over to our side. But we deceive ourselves. God is, in fact, relatable and relational. And He did, in fact, send his son Jesus to meet us on our level. But we must never forget that we are not God’s equals. We are less to Him than a bacterium is to us. And until we understand how insignificant we are compared to God, we can never fully understand how great it is that he has called us significant.