The God Without A Box

            Most human beings think in boxes.  You’ve heard people say things like: “Wow, that dude is way out-of-the-box!”  What does that mean?  Typically it means that the person does things, or acts in ways that just aren’t normal.  Of course that brings up the next question:  “What does normal mean?”  Well, I don’t know anyone who can give us a good definition of “normal”, but it seems to me that “normal” is the stuff that fits within my box.

            There are tons of different boxes.  Most of us have political boxes, religious boxes, relational boxes, behavioral boxes.  Heck, most of us who ride on two wheels have biker boxes!  You know, maybe you only want to hang out with people who ride Harley’s, or Honda’s, or whatever.  For you, then, a “normal” biker is someone who rides the kind of bike you ride.  You have a certain concept of what a “normal” biker should be, so if you meet a biker who doesn’t fit your definition you might say that the person simply doesn’t fit in your box.

            Whether we realize it or not, every one of us has a religious box.  If we start rummaging through this box we’ll find ideas about God, church, Christianity, other religions, etc.  What does the God in your box look like?  Maybe he’s cruel, demanding, angry, and just wants to punish people all the time.  It could be that he is far removed, distant, uninterested, and just doesn’t like you very much.  Some folks are just downright scared of God.  For them, he’s a great big fire-spitting dude that wants to send everyone to hell.  Then you may be one of those people that don’t believe in God.  But, even that doesn’t mean you don’t have a God-box, it just means its real small.  In fact, most of us have pretty small God-boxes.

            Even the people in Jesus’ day didn’t have a very big God-box.  There’s a statement in the Bible, in the New Testament, which talks about Jesus coming to help his own people, the Jews, but they didn’t receive him.  Why?  He didn’t fit their box – their preconceived ideas about what the Messiah (savior) was supposed to be like.  It’s important to keep in mind, though, that it wasn’t God or his son, Jesus, that gave the people a wrong impression; it was the religious establishment of the day that built the box that Jesus was supposed to live in.

            It really isn’t fair for us to be too hard on the religious Jews of Jesus’ day for muddying up people’s ideas about God.  We do the very same thing.  Instead of being free to discover the bigness of God, we try to shove him into the little boxes of our own understanding.  I’ve been in church most of my life, and one of the statements I have heard a zillion times is: “But God would never do anything like that!” Yes, God has given us the Bible to help us understand who he is and how he operates, but even the Bible is not able to give us a full and complete picture of God.  Plus, we sometimes twist what the Bible says in order to create a God that is comfortable for us, that fits in our box.  So who’s got the inside line on God, that has a right to determine what he will or will not do?

            The fact is that God simply doesn’t live in a box . . . of any size.  He’s way out of the box . . . every box!  Are you willing to trash your God-box?  Think about it.

Dodging boxes,

Derryck McLuhan

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