Constraining God

I was reading Al Franken's new book "The Truth - With Jokes" and one part dealt with how G W Bush manipulated the religious right through, amoung other things, their fear of gay people. In thinking about the (very tired) argument from conservative and Bible literalist Christians that God couldn't create gays because the Bible condemns gays, I realized that these people are constraining God. They are limiting God's infinite power to only that which was written in the Bible. By believing the Bible is inerrant, not even God can step outside it's bounds.

My father the minister is correct when he describes this as a form of idolatry, putting the Bible above God's speaking to us today.

The Rev. Jim Turner wrote...

I believe the problem came when Paul, and others who followed him, tried to put their experience of Jesus into words to share with others. Sigmund Freud was right! Human kind has created God in our image. The ancient Hebrew writers, the Apostle Paul and the other Christian writers tried to describe their experiences of God and of Jesus, with the only knowledge and language they had available. The God described became a "super sized" human. For too many centuries now Christians have continued to describe, even believe in a God that thinks, speaks, and acts like a super natural human person.

The writers of the Bible were inspired people, people who had seen God, who had experienced God and who had personal deep relationships with God. But they were only able to describe God in their own terms. It was a limitation we struggle with today. I cannot adequately describe my own relationship with God, though I try.

It begs the question that if God did dictate the words of the Bible to the authors, why are the words limited to those of it's writers. Oh, I know, that's God's will and we are not to question why, our is but to do and die. If I were God, I'd be creating a lot more interesting people than those who just obey. How dull an eternity for God. But my point is that if the writers were writing God's direct words, they would not have been constrained by the language of their day.

To me, God is not just an entity that created the universe, God is, in part, the life force of the universe, the integral vibrancy of everything that is. I think that is why I find God's presence so much in nature. The rocks and hills themselves will sing the praise of God because they are inherently connected to God, not as an inanimate object created and set aside by a creator, but an integral part of God alive with the energy that drives the universe.

Everything is not God, but God is present in everything. And rather than limiting God to the capabilities of humans, perhaps we would be better served at discovering the untapped potential of our humanity through the unchaining God from our small thinking.

One of my favorite quotes came from Pastor Bob...

"I choose not to limit God."