Your God Is Too Small; A Book Review

 In 2016 I bought a book that challenged the stereotypes we have for God and Jesus. I’ve since read it twice. The author, J.B. Phillips, says our concept of God is too small. He is actually much larger.

Your God is Too Small; A Guide for Believers and Skeptics Alike

“The trouble with many of us today, writes J.B. Phillips, is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In varying degrees we suffer from a limited idea of God. Phillips exposes such inadequate conceptions of God as “Resident Policeman, ” “Grand Old Man, ” “Meek-and-Mild, ” and “Managing Director, ” and explores ways in which we can find a truly meaningful and constructive God for ourselves.”

Part One deals with destructive concepts—unreal gods. Like their conscience is the voice of God, or thinking God is exactly like our parents. 

Here’s a quote from thinking of God as a grand old man in the sky.

“They respect the Grand Old Man and His peculiarities, but they feel no inclination to worship Him as the living God.”

We think of Jesus as meek and mild, standing, holding a lamb, while staring into the distance. J.B. asks why “mild?” 

“This word “mild” is apparently deliberately used to describe a man who did not hesitate to challenge and expose the hypocrisies of the religious people of his day: a man who had such “personality” that He walked unscathed through a murderous crowd: a man so far from being a nonentity that He was regarded by the authorities as a public danger; a man who could be moved to violent anger by shameless exploitation or by smug complacent orthodoxy; a man of such courage that He deliberately walked to what He knew would mean death, despite the earnest pleas of well-meaning friends.”

“Jesus Christ might well be called “meek” in the sense of being selfless and humble and utterly devoted to what He considered right, whatever the personal cost; but “mild,” never!”

I like this quote later on…

“God will inevitably appear to disappoint the man who is attempting to use Him as a convenience, a prop, or a comfort, for his own plans. God has never been known to disappoint the man who is sincerely wanting to cooperate with His own purposes.”

Phillips then says Part One’s point isn’t to just add to your concept of God but to help break down the preconceptions so you can see God. That’s what he begins to do in Part Two. 

He builds his argument over the chapters I’ll list now. Because I highlighted heavily here and even wrote a post or two because of this book. 

• God Unfocused
• A Clue to Reality
• Further Clues to Reality
• Is There a Focused God?
• If God Were Focused (1)
• If God Were Focused (2)
• Has A Arrived?
• Life’s Basic Principles (1)
• Life’s Basic Principles (2)
• Further Basic Questions
• Christ and the Question of Sin
• Satisfactory Reconciliation
• Demonstration with the Enemy
• The Abolition of Death
• Theory into Practice
• Summary

The book is only 124 pages long. While writing this review, I want to read it for the third time. 

Because of that, it gets a rare 6-star rating. To date, only Immediate Obedience has earned that. 

Recommend it to all Christians and people who think they know God but don’t. 

“Why Didn’t God Answer My Prayer?”

My brother asked a question about a bumper sticker slogan he saw. It said faith didn’t require facts. I usually don’t answer theological questions on Facebook, but I answered because of who he is.

Another friend commented that he spent his childhood praying for God to stop his abusive father. He was praying for peace. 

The heavens were silent.

He asked if there is a God, and He has the power to answer prayers, why is there so much pain and suffering. How can evil exist?

“Why didn’t God answer my prayer to make the bad stop?”

I saved the thread so I could reflect on it. I could give the intellectual answers, yet the heart would be unreached. 

We can choose to love or hate and twist the concepts to rationalize our actions.

We are all fallen and imperfect. I recognize the evil left in my heart, and it shocks and terrifies me.

Even acknowledging evil indicates recognizing a moral lawgiver and a standard. Without that, it’s only a matter of opinion, and the issue is just to change your opinion.

God’s answer to the question of evil is Jesus. He didn’t stay in Heaven apart from it all. God came to Earth, and not as a king or a superhero.

He came as a baby.

Jesus experienced the good and the bad of life. He doesn’t just sympathize; he can empathize. 

People tried to kill him. Jesus grieved loved ones who died. He was betrayed and abandoned. 

Jesus even had an unanswered prayer.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked God if there was a way to avoid the cross. Jesus, fully human and fully God, feared death, pain, and the wrath of God he faced the next day.

Jesus still chose to go to the cross. 

There, he reconciled God and man through himself. 

It will take time because there is a time when all will be judged. Either by what evil people had done or the good. 

If every evil act got a lightning bolt, there would be no one left. There would be no second chance, no mercy, and no chance at reconciliation. 

I would be dead and in Hell. So would you. 

Yet God is giving us every chance to stop and turn back to Him.

Why didn’t God answer your prayer?

We asked for a baby for years. People prayed over my wife on a night specifically for that at church. Women struggling with infertility got pregnant.

Casey got pregnant with Squiggles. An answered prayer. 

The first ultrasound revealed a dangerously slow heartbeat. I fasted and prayed that the baby would live. 

Squiggles didn’t. 

Why didn’t God answer my prayer?

The answer is…I don’t know.

I do know we were never promised an easy life. Jesus said this right before he went to the cross:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
‭‭John‬ ‭16:33‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Evil will get it’s due. 

Battle of the Gods

Exodus is an action-packed book, especially at the beginning. It's also profound, and at times confusing. For an idea of how deep, listen to Michael Heiser's The Naked Bible podcast. He went through the entire book, and I understood maybe half of it.

Here are some of my thoughts on it so far. To set the stage, think of it as a battle of the gods, and I'm not talking about the DragonBall Super movie though Beerus does look Egyptian.
BY Forevasick[/caption]

At the time, gods were believed to be localized to a degree. Pharaoh himself was supposed to be an incarnation of Ra or Horus. He was responsible for maintaining "Maat," the order in the country. From the flow of the Nile, crop growth, to the Sun moving across the sky, he was in charge.

Yahweh was just some mountain god in the east. One of many in the region and not that strong compared to Egypt's gods, at least as far as Pharoah was concerned.

Why do I mean by that?

The perception was when you do anything, even go to war, it's directly tied to the supernatural. If you went to battle, it was your god against their god, the strongest wins. Every fight was a holy war.
If you lost, your god(s) were weaker. The Hebrews, Yahweh's people, were enslaved, so what does that indicate?

And then Yahweh sends Moses and Aaron to pick a fight with the Egyptian pantheon. One against many.

"Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go." Exodus 5:2

The fight began. There are two trains of thought here. One is God doing an act of uncreation. The other is God showing that Pharoah and the Egyptian gods can't stop Him from doing whatever He wants in their country.

As I read, I thought about a few things.

"Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. 3 The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4 The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.'"
5 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.'"
6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7 But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt." Exodus 8:1-7

Sorcerers: "We can do that too."
Pharaoh: "Make it stop."
*Sorcerers try*
P: "Well..."
S: Sorry...
P: "Call Moses and Aaron"

"Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord."
9 Moses said to Pharaoh, "I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile."
10 "Tomorrow," Pharaoh said.
Moses replied, "It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile." Exodus 8: 8-11

Two thoughts, first, Moses sarcasm. "I leave you the honor..." Here you go, I'll let you think you're still somewhat in charge. Secondly, why didn't Pharoah say "now" instead of tomorrow?

Probably pride. This next passage is interesting.

"Then the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,' and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats." 17 They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. 18 But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.
Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart was hard, and he would not listen, just as the Lord had said." Exodus 8: 16-19

They couldn't create life from the sand. They could turn wood into a snake...interesting. A Note from the Cultural Backgrounds Bible says this:

"For the ancient Egyptians, the concept of the "finger" of a deity represented something dangerous and powerful that could bring about good or evil. The "finger of Seth" was feared for the harm it had done to the god Horus, while the "finger of Thoth" was praised for the threat it posed to the evil Apophis. By attributing this statement to the Egyptian magicians, the Biblical text presents an admission on their part that they are powerless in the face of one whom they perceive to be a hostile deity. They now recognize that they and their land are under divine attack.
This same phrase occurs in 31:18 but in a different context. There, the two tablets of stone that record God's covenant with the Israelites are said to be "inscribed by the finger of God." The verse clearly does not imply a hostile threat but still seems to invoke the image of a potent and mystical God. Thus, "finger" is probably a symbol of power and ability."

Let's go back to Exodus 8:10 with this in mind. "Moses replied, "It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God."

Paraphrase: "So that you know Yahweh is stronger than you or your gods." He also gave the Egyptians the finger. 

"Then the Lord said to Moses, "Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the river and say to him, 'This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 21 If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.
22 "'But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. 23 I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This sign will occur tomorrow.'" Exodus 8:20-23

It looks like the plague of gnats was still going when the biting flies hit—a one-two punch from Yahweh. God's been throwing jabs at Egypt's gods, and now he's getting more serious.


Then came the final plague, the death of all the firstborn, unless they did what Yahweh said; slaughter a lamb and put its blood on the doorpost. That is a pointer to the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, later on.

It appears that Pharoah had at least a week, maybe even two, to change his mind and let the Hebrews leave.

"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household...Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight." Exodus 12:1-3; 6

I was listening to Heiser's podcast on this, and he mentioned that this was a direct attack on the primary god-who incarnates in Pharaoh. When he dies, they do a ceremony so the god can incarnate in the firstborn.

Yahweh just took out the future leadership in Egypt.

I can't help but think of the cross when God-incarnate died. The Roman gods had won, and then Jesus rose from the dead. He beat death.

 

The same couldn't be said back then of Egypt's gods. There were zero resurrections.

When you read the Bible with an eye to the supernatural and natural being woven together, one affecting the other, it makes it more vibrant. Especially when you use the same lens to look at today's world, it's more magical.

Trial By Pandemic Fire

Do you know how steel is made? It isn't mined, it's forged from softer iron. The impurities are removed by melting it down and adding other things to it like lime (not the fruit) and carbon.

Why is this important?

The other day I was thinking about the difference between suffering and Biblical suffering. That may be a poor choice of words.

What I mean is, suffering without God, and suffering with God in your life.

Right now, the world is going through a trial by fire. Unemployment is high since the economy worldwide has slowed. My wife is furloughed, and my hours are reduced.

We're isolated, connecting only through technology. It's better than nothing. If you come from a dangerous home environment, the stress is making it worse. A good home environment and the pressure still makes it a bit tense.

The world is broken. Romans 8:20-22 says: "For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

It went downhill in Genesis. The verses before this give us hope.

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed." Romans 8:19-20

What does this have to do with steel? Reality is a trial by fire, a furnace. We're all iron or a weaker metal. We get melted down, but if you remain mostly the same and just endure... you're resilient.


Suffering=fire.

Nothing is added, though. Suffering with God adds something. Extra ingredients. The removal of impurities.

Don't believe the thought that if you get saved and follow Jesus, then life is health, wealth, and prosperity. The apostles would laugh. Especially Paul.

You will gain something, though.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:2-4
Maturity for one.
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Romans 5:3-4

Perseverance builds character. What about this hope? Where does that come from?

"I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Jesus has overcome the world. It's simultaneously happened and happening. Like the coming of my son, he's here but not born, yet our reality is changing.

Suffering with God adds something to you. In the end, when the fire is over, you'll be a more durable metal.

Monuments, Memorials and the Road Home

Yesterday P.Rod posted about a season of spiritual warfare, especially since moving forward on the Helena church plant. Unexplained sicknesses, crazy things going on, etc. he’s been praying the 27th Psalm.
Curious I looked it up.
Good one to pray.

Very loose game plan today.

Regretted not getting mom that coffee cup with her name in Cedar Village at Yellowstone. Finally found something with her name at Mount Rushmore. Well, Casey did, because she rocks.

Mount Rushmore was cool, but not as impressive as the Tetons and Yellowstone. No Nicholas Cage running around.

What they look like

How they planned to carve them

How to carve a mountain

Same with Crazy Horse. I did like the museum. What impressed me is that it’s privately funded.

South Dakota has interesting rolling topography. Almost like a crater at times.

Stopped at a gas station. It was closed. Lady wanted gas. Only had cash and they were closed.
My first instinct was to pay for their gas.
I didn’t and now I wonder if I should have. They weren’t abandoned. The clerks were still there...

If I finish my current book I’ll have read 5 in the last week. Roadtrips allow for lots of reading time.

Staying at a jacked up Super 8. It’s gotten good and bad reviews. Looks beat up. Got stuck in a smoking room (even though Georgia quit). Casey gagged.
Run down car in the back had Dustin pull his pistol out and chamber a round.
I had a hand near my “travel knife” that Bobby gave me. Not my working blade. It’s sinfully dull. This may be an interesting night...

We survived, and made it home the next day. I powered through the final 298 miles back to Arkansas since I was so tired of sitting in a car at that point.

Reflections on the Road to Mount Rushmore.

Up early and on the road to Rushmore. A several hour drive. Eight if I remember right.

Dubois, WY is an old western town that was modernized. I’m liking this state.

Traveling Southeast across Wyoming towards Casper where Lena lives. No trees. Wide open. Really want to look at a starry night in big sky country.

Listening to music and reflecting. The past me and the now me. The amalgamation of people’s influence and experiences on a person. Getting to the bottom of me, becoming me.
The procession of trauma from my godson, Noah’s death. That feels like another lifetime ago almost.

Check engine light popped up on Daniels truck again. OnStar is running diagnostics. Haven’t heard back from them yet. Everything is broken yet the truck runs.
The suspicion is the truck's hard shifting on cruise control while pulling a camper the size of a small mobile home.

We stopped at a peaceful but crowded campground. No idea what we’re doing tomorrow.

The plan is to pack light and leaving after we see Rushmore. Joey will bring the rest to Jacksonville if necessary, if they don’t meet up with us in Oklahoma.

Taking in the stars. Finally getting to see the Milky Way. Looking at it through the binoculars and I can see even more stars. Reminds me of Psalm 147:4, “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.”

If only my camera could catch that beauty.

Invading the Grand Tetons and the Top of the World

Woke up to the kids being awake. Talking about ghosts and hackers. The stories about hackers sound like something conspiracy minded adults would come up with.

Casey’s going with meon the hike. I’m going to stop at the store for grizzly info. May get the spray. Casey said it’s not important.
Considering the size of that bear....

Carrying Daniel’s pistol. The revolver. Haven’t carried a pistol in 6 years. Doesn’t feel to unusual.

Ground squirrels everywhere.

Didn’t get to far and seen a mama moose. She was moving quick, and right behind her were two calves. Couldn’t do a binocular shot.
Got a blurry picture. Started trying to flank her because I dang sure didn’t want to surprise her. Especially with calves

Snake River by Camp

We got called back before we got very far. Less than a mile.
It was slow because it wasn’t like a normal hike. More like a hunt where I would feel better with my .308 than a .45 Long Colt.
Usual where I usually go I’m the apex predator.
Not here. Even the herbivores are very dangerous.
Still very relaxing, either way.

Going into the Grand Tetons around Jenny Lake. On the way a big black bear just went off the road. Neither Joey or I were fast enough to get that picture

Jenny Lake overlook is so peaceful. Lots of normal pictures and through the binoculars. The other shore is a mile across but doesn’t look it.

Grand Tetons

Jenny Lake

Snowmelt Waterfalls

Going on the tram at a Jackson Hole resort called Teton Village.

That was amazing. So many pictures and videos. Insane. 10,450 feet up in the air. Only been that high in a plane. So cold too. When we got to the top we saw other tourists in jackets, shivering. Definitely weren’t prepared for that today.
All of Casey’s pictures have her shivering. You'll see in the video.

Back at camp and packing for the ride to Mount Rushmore tomorrow. Today was definitely my favorite.