How Big is Your God?

God created man, but man turned right around and created God.

Through centuries of needing to explain, to have power over others, and to our inability to see God in terms bigger than ourselves, we created a God who is just a reflection of us.  We have forgotten that God is bigger than we are, grander, Omnipotent, Omnipresent and just plain beyond our feeble capacity to understand.

  A child's knowledge of a car is very different from the 50 year olds' knowledge.  The child has limited experience and can only relate in terms of that experience.  The adult just plain knows more and understands more from the experience of driving it, fixing it, and caring for it.  Experience is the key.

At the start of any religion, we come as children, limited knowledge, limited experience.  As we grow we should learn more, and our experience should change as we grow.  But that so rarely happens. Most of the Christians I have been around and am around are stuck in the same place spiritually as when they were children.  They have not questioned, reached out to know more and experience.  They take comfort and claim righteousness in beliefs that have not evolved beyond thousands of years.  They seek no other experience other than reading the same words with little comprehension, going to church and now and then making a stab at trying to live the Ten Commandments.

Now, I am happy inside for them that they have a connection to God whatever it is, but I weep that they cannot break out and experience more.  God is so much bigger than they seem to know.  So much bigger than words in a text or words from a sermon.  

Growing up as a Christian was very confusing for me. I was in constant hot water for questions asked in Sunday School. My poor teachers could impart nothing beyond the stories we all parrot. Looking back I feel bad for the stress I must've caused some of them. Christians, as do other religions, have everything all wrapped up in a neat package. No need to think, and certainly no need to question. Faith! You must have faith that this is true and that is true. I had faith in GOD, I thought, but some of the stuff I heard seemed just plain wrong.

Now don't get me wrong, I greatly respect the Christian faith, it's tenets and it's writings, in fact I respect all the other faiths I have learned about. It's just that I see our current religions and their accoutrements as so man-made and contrived. I can speak more towards Christianity and the Bible, as I have more knowledge of both, but I find the same things in other religions as I study them. Again, I am not trying to tear down faith or religion, I just think there is so much more than we comprehend, and in our search to comprehend, we can only write and believe as big as we are. God is soooo much bigger.

One of the first problems I had in just swallowing what I was taught, was in reading and hearing that God was love, he was just and merciful and forgiving. He cared for us so much. Then he was vengeful, cruel, judging, and all these negative things. If God was love, then why would he cause us pain on purpose, why would he love us only if we did exactly as he wanted. He gave us free will, but we couldn't exercise it without punishment. How is that free will? It just seemed so wrong to me. How was that love?????

God was taught to me as a big bully, wrapped up in hollow words of how he embodied love.  No matter how you cut it, life was not yours to live and experience.  You were a bad person from the get go, trying to reach a place where God would love you and take you in his arms forever.  God was as the worst of humans, just with more powers. I couldn't accept that. As I grew older and began to study more, especially about Bible translations I learned how much humans had messed with religion and the Bible.  Kings and rulers withheld it from the populace and only let out what they wanted.  The religious leaders were allowed access, and they had free reign in changing it for use in controlling the masses.  God and the Bible were used as a tool to put down and keep down the very people they were intended to elevate.  Those in power feared the people having power.  The church and state were inseparable in most cases, both intent on keeping that power for themselves.  God was  becoming distorted.  

I took little comfort in the God I was taught.  I felt God and often felt the power and joy of God, but in the presence of those who believed that God was small and mean, I didn't feel God.  I felt small and wrong and insignificant. Was this what God wanted for me?  How could I take comfort and joy in a God who could be hurt so easily and retaliate so harshly.  I was God's child, yet he would give me up so easily and thoroughly?  It was something I couldn't accept.  When I believed that God wanted the best for me and held me close and loved me NO MATTER WHAT, then I felt the joy.  I moved away from the formal church and religion and began a personal relationship.  It felt right.

Then I had questions about the fact that if we didn't do exactly as proscribed, we could be lost to a fallen angel. Wasn't God stronger than "Satan". How could God let us go if we were so loved? How could something be stronger than God and take us away from Him? Again, I couldn't wrap my heart around these concepts.  None of the church leaders could ever answer in a way that made sense.  Just because it was in the Bible it was true.

Simply put, I stopped believing in "a devil".  I couldn't believe in a God who was so weak or uncaring that he would let us go.  It hurt my heart.  How can you take comfort in a God so insecure, and helpless?  I couldn't.  Believing that God loved me no matter what filled me with joy.  Believing that he was big enough and patient enough to see me through anything felt right. I was given this life to live and enjoy and to find joy and peace in the "Creator".  Sometimes I left the Creator behind in pursuit of my own desires, but when I came back, I was right back where I belonged, loved, safe, cared for and happy.  No "Devil made me do it", or tempted me, I was given free will, and I choose my way.  God was always there when I came back, and always would be.  Kinda like the "Footsteps" story.  When there were only one set of footsteps in the sand, it was God/Jesus holding on to me and carrying me as I made my way through my own personal morass.  I could live with that, and my heart felt right about that.  God wants us to live.  

Next, the Bible made me a bit crazy. If someone quotes one thing from the bible, you can find another that says the exact opposite. What was real? Which was right? How could two opposites both be taken literally?  What about the story of Christ's birth.  I grew up with the version of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, the manger, wise men, shepherds and all the trimmings of the Christmas story as we enjoyed it each December.

Read the birth stories in Matthew and Luke (Mark and John don't mention it) and you will get two wildly different and irreconcilable  stories. 

In Matthew, Mary and Joseph live in Bethlehem, Jesus is born, Wise Men come to worship him, having stopped in Jerusalem first and inadvertently letting Herod know the King is born.  Herod decrees that all children under two are to be killed. An angel tells Joseph to flee, and off he goes with Mary and Jesus to Egypt for two years until he is told he can return.  He doesn't go back to Bethlehem, but settles in Nazareth in fear of Herod's son..

Luke's version is that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, went to Bethlehem for a tax census, couldn't find room in an inn, so Jesus was born in a manger, with only the animals as witnesses and later shepherds.  They went back to Nazareth right away and stayed there.   

In both there are only two things that are the same.  Born in Bethlehem, Jesus grew up in Nazareth.  There were historians in those times who recorded the events around them, Joesephus being the most famous.  In all his writings, there was plenty of mention of Herod and his doings, but no mention of anything as huge as decreeing all children under two were to be slain. As for the tax censuses, they were recorded, but the only one that would have affected Joseph took place eight years after Jesus was born.

So we have two stories with little in common, and a seemingly invented history.  Matthews story seems to be a compilation of many Old Testament prophecies and the story of Moses.  Luke's is a quieter and less embellished story.  Which is true? Does it even matter?  Jesus was born and changed the world.  

The bible and other sacred texts I have studied are truly works of God, I believe that they have much to teach us, but to try and take them literally is wrong.  First, it was written by men trying to explain something they didn't understand.  It wasn't even a whole book, just a compilation of writings that over thousands of years that became used as a tool to teach history and inspire.  Second, the writings were changed by other men for their own uses. Third, I believe that though they can't be taken literally, they can be used to show us a way.  Much as Jesus spoke in parables to illustrate teachings, the whole Bible can be taken that way.  It teaches by stories.  We have much to learn if we can glean the intent of the teachings and not get bogged down in the words.  Let your heart lead.  I read the bible and in most of it I find joy and strength.  In those passages where I feel smallness, hurt and pain, I attribute it to those who wrote those passages as feeling themselves small, hurt and pained, not God. God is bigger, and beyond the emotions and pains of man.  

God is huge....patient enough for all of us, totally loving, unwilling to let us go, even when we take off on our own. God wants the highest and best for us and has the power to make it so when we do our part in keeping the connection.  God doesn't give us more than we can receive, we have free will.  We receive only as much as we let in.  It is important to grow, to put aside childish beliefs and strive to learn more.  The more I learn, the bigger God gets and the more I am able to receive.   Every day is wondrous in my constantly newfound God.  No more do I worry and put myself down, afraid of God and of his gifts.  I find God in everything I see and hear.  He is in this book, that movie, this sunrise, that rain cloud, simply everywhere.  I just have to choose to connect and receive.  I need not fear that God will let me go or lose me, that he will stop loving me or send me pain an hurt in retaliation. WHAT A GREAT BIG GOD I HAVE FOUND.

I can't say I have found all the answers, or have even found all the questions, but I have found enough that has put my soul to rest and liberated my heart. I have found MY religion, the one that works for me. It is a mix of the worlds great texts and teachings, but it is one that comes from my heart and soul, guided by the "Creator", my Source.  That is the one that counts, not the one invented and used by mere men.  Let your soul connect and find your own Source!

My God is big, too big for me to understand, but not to big for me to reach for and touch.  My God doesn't have all the problems that we have.  My God doesn't have our petty jealousies and needs.  He can't be hurt, he has infinite patience and infinite love.  We needn't worry that we will be cast aside or left behind, God has room and patience and love for all of us, we just have to reach for it.  God is big enough for us all.