Is your God too small?

I guess another way of asking the above question is "How big is your God?" This is a topic that has come up in several different contexts for me lately. Initially, at a seminar we were asked to read the book "Is your God too small?" by JB Phillips. It's available as an e - book. I have only read the first half that deals with the many 'distorted' images of God that Christians carry.....due to various influences in their lives. And again at a group meeting, the topic emerged as someone shared her desire to learn more about God and how that learning has influenced her perceptions about God. It has made her question the rather simplistic answers she has been taught in her church.

Indeed this whole 'thorny' area of knowing God will never be finally solved in this life. I have a great love and respect for Scripture as God's revelation of himself. And yet the more I read and ponder and pray, the more I would say that I just don't understand that much about God any more. Sure, the conventional doctrines are 'secure' in that they give an orderly description of God and his purposes. But I have come to question the exclusivity of many of them - since I have read convincing arguments from different viewpoints, all by renowned theologians. So in the end, who is right? They all quote from Scripture, but obviously they interpret the same words (of course there's the problem of translation and cultural context in the use of language) differently. Some of them take into consideration other ways God reveals himself - through reason, experience, tradition and not only through the written Word.

However, at the end of our sharing, it seemed most appropriate that we reminded ourselves of Paul's very poetic writings about 'love' in 1 Cor 13. As we read this, I found my heart growing still, I found awe returning, and a wonderful sense of mystery enfolding me (while just earlier, the mind was trying to take charge and figure things out). As the Zen masters have always known, true knowledge has to pass through the way of paradox - to know in the unknowing; or as Paul says, "to see as in a mirror dimly". Be content with that. Yet never become self satisfied that we have loved enough.