Your God is Too Small

are considerably worried by the thought of God simultaneously hearing and answering the prayers and aspirations of people all over the world. That may be because their mental picture is of a harassed telephone operator answering callers at a switchboard of superhuman size. It is really better to say frankly, "I can't imagine how it can be done" (which is the literal truth), than to confuse the mind with the picture of an enlarged man performing the impossible.

All the "lofty" concepts of the greatness of God need to be carefully watched lest they turn out to be mere magnifications of certain human characteristics. We may, for instance, admire the ascetic ultra-spiritual type which appears to have "a mind above" food, sexual attraction, and material comfort, for example. But if in forming a picture of the Holiness of God we are simply enlarging this spirituality and asceticism to the "Nth" degree, we are forced to some peculiar conclusions.

Thus we may find ourselves readily able to imagine God's interest in babies (for are they not "little bits of Heaven"?), yet unable to imagine His approval, let alone design, of the acts which led to their conception!

Similarly it is natural and right, of course, that the worship we offer to God in public should be of the highest possible quality. But that must not lead us to conceive a musically "ThirdProgramme" god who prefers the exquisite rendering of a cynical professional choir to the ragged bawling of sincere but untutored hearts.

To hold a conception of God as a mere magnified human being is to run the risk of thinking of Him as simply the Commander-in-Chief who cannot possibly spare the time to attend to the details of His subordinates' lives. Yet to have a god who is so far beyond personality and so far removed from the human context in which we alone can appreciate "values," is to have a god who is a mere bunch of perfect qualities -- which means an Idea and nothing more. We need a God with the capacity to hold, so to