This Jesus

Bill Kinnon caught my attention with his response to a post by Darryl Dash. (Kinnon's blog comes before Dash's on my Bloglines reader.)

Creps talked about our tendency to shrink spirituality, offering Jesus as a set of self-improvement techniques. "We present a Jesus so small that he can be tucked into our lives," he said.

Wow. It is not unlike the statement I have heard around 12-Step places that if God can be understood by me- a poor human- I sure don't want to believe and follow such a god. Yes. Or as J B Phillips once put it in a remarkable book title: Your God is Too Small. Yes, I know I do that with God. I want Jesus to fit into my categories, my ideals, my politics, my back pocket so I can pull Him out when I want him and then, just as easily put him away when he becomes inconvenient. Such a simple line about human-shrunken spirituality.

So I went on to Darryl's blog and found even more:

The enemy of faith is not so much doubt, Creps explained. It is reductionism. The world is waiting for a spirituality that is big, much bigger than the one we're offering with our self-help spirituality. Instead of looking for turbo versions of ourselves, maybe we need to spend more time looking at the transcendent God who is much bigger than our puny lives and organizations.
--Dr. Darryl Dash

Reductionism. The small god. Which is why I have no doubt whatsoever that when I get to heaven I am going to be nothing short of amazed- and humbled- and probably embarrassed by how little I really understood and how few ways God fits my misconceptions.