Letting God Out of the Box

Is your God - or I could say, your idea of God – safely inside a nice comfortable box?  This is probably a rhetorical question because I think if is inevitable that we either consciously or unconsciously put God into a box to contain our idea of God.

Now, at this point you might be asking, what about atheists?  They don’t believe there is a God.  Now I could interject and quote psalm 14, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’”  However, that would be unfair and what would be the point is quoting scripture to an antsiest.  To stay on point, saying there is no God is actually a way of putting God on a box which is labelled no God.  As I recall from my grade 10 or 11 math a null set is a is a subset of every set (or something like that as grade 10 was a long time ago).   Another way of responding to an atheist is, tell me about the God you do not believe in. 

Some boxes that a person can put God into can be very well defined.  It might be that God is in a box that is defined by the Old testament - a God of judgement that can strike down enemies of the builder of the box.  Another box might have walls that are defined by love.  Another might be a God that set things in motion and then sat back and watched creation unfold according to the laws God established at creation without getting involved any further.  Other boxes may have very expandable and rather nebulous walls such as the God of Teilhard de Chardin who saw God as the omega point or the God of process theologians who saw God evolving along with God’s creation.  This is a box that seems to allow for a God who is both immanent and transcendent – which is another pair of boxes we can put God into.

So, given that we can have boxes in which put our version of God, does that really matter?   Does the God we believe in affect the way we live or is it the other way around?  Is who we are – the type of person we are (I could say how God created us to be but that would be a bit circular), determine the type of box we construct to put God into?   I can’t say that I have reached any conclusions on that.  However, perhaps what I am suggesting today is that it is useful to consider the box that you have put God into and to consider what happens if we discover something which may be from God that don’t fit that picture we have about God.

Perhaps exploring this could produce something worthwhile – bear some good fruit. 

Blessings on your journey.