Gene's Blog

A God Too Small

From Steve Goodier:

A GOD TOO SMALL

I enjoy a story about baseball great Joe Garagiola. He once stepped to the plate when his turn came to bat. Before assuming his stance, however, fervent Roman Catholic Joe took his bat and made the sign of the cross in the dirt in front of home plate. Catcher Yogi Berra, also a devout Catholic, walked over and erased Garagiola’s cross. Turning to the astonished batter, Berra smiled and said, “Let’s let God watch this inning.”

If I were God (and thank goodness I’m not), I think I would have wanted to simply watch the inning.

I likewise appreciate the story about an old Quaker who stood during the church meeting and told his fellow Friends about a young man who was not a Quaker and who lived an undisciplined life. This young man invited a pious Quaker friend to go sailing one day. A sudden storm came up and the wild young man was drowned. Having made his point, the old Quaker sat down.

Silence returned to the meeting until the old man once again arose.  This time he said, “Friends, for the honor of the truth, I think I ought to add that the Quaker also drowned.”

And if I were God (and again, thank goodness I’m not), I think I would have felt sadness for both losses. Neither was a greater tragedy than the other.

I know that religious piety can be a wondrous and beautiful thing. But it disturbs me the prominent role religions have historically played in wars and brutality over the ages. If I imagine a god so small as to favor those who think like me, worship like me and act like me, then I know very little of life and less of faith. I can’t help but think this world would be in better shape if the gods most of us believed in were a little bigger.

— Steve Goodier

I love these little synchrhonicities that pop up along the path.  I was thinking about this very thing this weekend past.  Wanting to bring the conversation here back to the books I started this blog with.  And the thought that kept running through my mind, is how we humans have crafted God to be as small as we.  Each side, no matter what the debate, claims to have the support of God.  People, virtually always men, but increasingly, in the middle east anyway, women too, are willing kill innocents because they believe their particular book, or their interpretation of it, means they must either convert others to their brand of piety, or kill them.

We humans in our forever religious fervor try to make God as small as we feel.  When the truth is so much greater than that.  We may, or  may not, have been created in His image, although that does seem to leave the female population out in the cold, so to speak, but what we have done with that idea over the centuries is use it to write books in which we condemn all who believe in other books to death and damnation eternal.

When I think along those lines, I always wonder how people can take them seriously.  What sort of God would allow the creation of 6000 religions and then expect each of His or Her children to FIND that ONE true religion, even if born in a part of the world that has never heard of it, and then condemn to eternal torment all others?  Well, I have an answer to that question!  No sort of God would do that.  No sort of parent would do that.  Which brings me then to the idea that it isn’t God who wrote those books, nor came up with those ideas, it was men, for the purpose of exerting power over other men, and women and children too.  How?  By causing them to live in fear.  Our creator is not fearful.  Look to my main site for descriptions of what it feels like to be, even for a few seconds, in the presence of God, because that is what I believe I experienced, and why that site exists, to speak to that truth.  God is love.  Humans are fearful.  And the last thing God wants is for us to fear Him/Her.  Our creator is so much more than we puny humans with our never-ending bloodthirsty will to kill everything and everyone who dare have a different idea, or believe in a different book.  I tell you all those books are lies, concocted by humans for human purposes, not divine.  The closest words of truth that you will find about our Creator are contained in Conversations With God, Books 1 and 2, by Neale Donald Walsch.  And in my next post, soon, I am going to talk about what God says there and the truth of those words.  Until then, much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene