Big God? Big Problems, Perhaps...

This is in response to Richard Beck's response to Tony Jones' challenge to progressive theological bloggers.

As a psychologist, Beck is acutely aware of the attitudes and actions of his students when they speak of religion, worship, and theology. He has written several times about the emphasis of the "awesomeness" of God in contemporary worship, and what attitudes this might bring about.


Yes, God is big. Immense. Over-Arching.

Awesome, to be sure.


But more importantly, he is, and embodies everything.

Everything.

Big, small. The universe and the atom. The Alpha and Omega.


We tend to love the ecstatic feeling of the big worship services that declare and magnify His greatness and glory, yet we tend to become uncomfortable, as a society, when challenged to look deep inside ourselves for Him in the smallness of our being.

Really, People?

We want to get our collective drawers in a wad about the opinion of a chicken magnate and some politicians that disagree with him?

We want to choose up sides about how Caesar should be using the wages of our labor to do God's work?

Puh-leeze, we need to get over our self-centeredness on these kinds of issues.


We want to conflate our Christianity with our polity, and the result is that we make both ineffective and useless.