I saw a sign on a car's window recently. It read, "God is too big for any one religion." Hmmm. Interesting thought.
My immediate reaction is to be defensive. "Not for MY religion," I'm inclined to muse. On the other hand, I do have to respect the statement's acknowledgement of God's bigness. He is BIG! He's certainly big in size and scope - filling the whole universe (Eph. 4:10) and measuring the heavens by the width of His hand (Isaiah 40:12) is a pretty convincing feat along those lines. I have a feeling that the message meant more than that kind of big, though, because spacial size doesn't have much to do with religions. Religions aren't bottles or boxes in which only so much can physically fit.
On what kind of bigness is this message commenting? Well, quite frankly, the sticker's message didn't seem to have God's bigness in mind as much as the smallness and limitations of religions. Very well, then, what's the point of that message? Religions are useless because they can't capture the fullness of God? God is best understood through the lens of multiple or maybe all religions? Either of those assertions are nonsensical! If we view all religions - including Christianity (I know some balk at the reference of our relationship to God through Christ as a 'religion', but it is a religion) - as man's imagining of God and his own discoveries about God, then I might agree with the above assertions. If, however, God Himself chose to disclose His nature, His desires, His characteristics and deeds to men, then of course that religious framework which subscribes to God's self-disclosure would have a truth-advantage over all others. This is why the Muslims consider themselves to have the truth-advantage: they believe Allah disclosed the truth about himself to their prophet. For the Jews it was Moses and the prophets. For Latter Day Saints it was Joseph Smith and their modern Apostles/Prophets. For those of Biblical Christianity, the self-disclosure of God to which we submit ourselves is Christ Himself as expressed in the New Testament Scriptures.
God is too big to be entirely and exhaustively described and honored in our religious books, in our songs or our sermons. He is not too big, however, to define himself to us in ways that we can draw near to Him and know Him personally. In fact, He is not even too big to show Himself to mankind in the form of a poor Jewish rabbi walking along the Sea of Galilee. If the person Jesus is my religion (i.e. my devoted belief and way of life), then God's just the right size for my religion because Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) and in him "all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Nice try, window sticker, but I'll take Jesus' Word over yours any day.
My immediate reaction is to be defensive. "Not for MY religion," I'm inclined to muse. On the other hand, I do have to respect the statement's acknowledgement of God's bigness. He is BIG! He's certainly big in size and scope - filling the whole universe (Eph. 4:10) and measuring the heavens by the width of His hand (Isaiah 40:12) is a pretty convincing feat along those lines. I have a feeling that the message meant more than that kind of big, though, because spacial size doesn't have much to do with religions. Religions aren't bottles or boxes in which only so much can physically fit.
On what kind of bigness is this message commenting? Well, quite frankly, the sticker's message didn't seem to have God's bigness in mind as much as the smallness and limitations of religions. Very well, then, what's the point of that message? Religions are useless because they can't capture the fullness of God? God is best understood through the lens of multiple or maybe all religions? Either of those assertions are nonsensical! If we view all religions - including Christianity (I know some balk at the reference of our relationship to God through Christ as a 'religion', but it is a religion) - as man's imagining of God and his own discoveries about God, then I might agree with the above assertions. If, however, God Himself chose to disclose His nature, His desires, His characteristics and deeds to men, then of course that religious framework which subscribes to God's self-disclosure would have a truth-advantage over all others. This is why the Muslims consider themselves to have the truth-advantage: they believe Allah disclosed the truth about himself to their prophet. For the Jews it was Moses and the prophets. For Latter Day Saints it was Joseph Smith and their modern Apostles/Prophets. For those of Biblical Christianity, the self-disclosure of God to which we submit ourselves is Christ Himself as expressed in the New Testament Scriptures.
God is too big to be entirely and exhaustively described and honored in our religious books, in our songs or our sermons. He is not too big, however, to define himself to us in ways that we can draw near to Him and know Him personally. In fact, He is not even too big to show Himself to mankind in the form of a poor Jewish rabbi walking along the Sea of Galilee. If the person Jesus is my religion (i.e. my devoted belief and way of life), then God's just the right size for my religion because Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) and in him "all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Nice try, window sticker, but I'll take Jesus' Word over yours any day.
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