Your God is Too Small

Recently I read (again!) about some senator railing against evolution as being “Straight from the pits of hell.” Because the Bible says the world was created in seven days, any evidence to the contrary must apparently have satanic influences... or something.

You know, I’m really tired of some very small-minded Christians who think they know what is best and right. Honestly, they have no idea.

Not that I know either, which is entirely the point. None of us know. None of us can know. None of us know exactly how the universe was created. None of us know if God created it, or if, as Stephen Hawking says “God is not necessary to explain the creation of the universe.”

But look up in the sky some night. And maybe even read a little. You’ll find that this seven-day created world is just a tiny corner of a much larger universe. Our planet travels around the sun, which is just one of about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, which is just one galaxy of at least 100 billion more... you get the idea. God’s universe is a whole lot bigger than this tiny seven-day creation.

So what does this say about God? Well of course that depends on how you look at it. Knowing the scope of the universe, it would be easy to point to the Bible and to feel that God is just not enough to explain all of it. I mean, if we have that many stars, then we probably have more than just ONE species of life, at least one would think. So what does that say about man’s being God’s creation, made “in his image?” The more we see ourselves as just a small part of the universe, then, one could argue, the less likely that our god is THE God. And I will admit, there are times when that argument makes a lot of sense to me.

But that’s not how I normally look at it. As the universe gets bigger, as I see it, that makes God that much bigger. The idea of God being the god of a universe that consists of one sentient species on one planet in one solar system is neat and tidy, but to me it now seems so old-fashioned, so quaint. And so inadequate. Instead, my God is the creator of a universe that has trillions of planets and possibly thousands or millions of different sentient species. For God to have created all that, and to be in control of it, that makes God very big.

But if the universe is so big, and God is Lord of it all, where does that leave me? How can this God of All Creation have time to care about me? To even know about me? To listen to my prayers? And sometimes even answer them? It makes sense to say that He can’t, and the idea of a God just doesn’t stand up under this kind of universe. But to me, it just makes God that much bigger. And that much more unexplainable. And that much cooler.

As long as we try to fit science and the world into our idea of what we think God is, we’re going to continue to get it wrong. Because no matter how we try, our idea of God is just too small.

But I know my God is big. Bigger than I can imagine. And that’s pretty awesome.