Your God Is Too Small by J. B. Phillips

Author:J. B. Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Touchstone Book

IV. Is There a Focused God?

BEAUTY. Goodness, and Truth, wherever they occur, are certainly clues; but they seem to be like cameras focused “to infinity”—we cannot tell how far and how great is the Reality to which they are pointing.

Now although everyone knows what is meant by Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, it is impossible to visualize them as absolute values. We can visualize a beautiful thing, but not beauty; a good man, but not goodness; a true fact, but not truth. Yet once we have a beautiful thing held in our minds it is comparatively easy to fill the mind with other beauties; once we consider a truly good man we can expand and develop his qualities until we begin to get some idea of goodness; while if we are once convinced of a certain fact (particularly if we have discovered it ourselves), we can at once think of a world of truths—we begin to visualize the absolute quality of Truth.

We see beauty, then, when it is first focused for us in a beautiful thing; goodness when it is focused in a good man; truth when it is focused in a fact of which we are sure. Absolute values may exist as mental concepts for the trained philosopher; but the ordinary man must see his values focused in people or things that he knows before he can grasp them.

Let us now make a further step. The mystic claims to be able to grasp something of God in the Absolute. But the mystic is even more uncommon than the philosopher, and any attempt by the ordinary man to “imagine” God results in nothing but the “vague oblong blur” complained of by those modern people who make the attempt. Yet if a man can see God focused and be convinced that he is seeing God, scaled-down but authentic, he can, as in the case of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, add all the other inklings and impressions that he has of the majesty, magnificence, and order of the Infinite Being, and “see God.”

But can he so see God “focused”? There must be more than elusive sparks and flashes of the divine—there must be a flame burning steadily so that its light can be examined and properly assessed.

It is a fascinating problem for us human beings to consider how the Eternal Being—wishing to show men His own Character focused, His own Thought expressed, and His own Purpose demonstrated—could introduce Himself into the stream of human history without disturbing or disrupting it. There must obviously be an almost unbelievable “scaling-down” of the “size” of God to match the life of the planet. There must be a complete acceptance of the space-and-time limitations of this present life. The thing must be done properly—it must not, for example, be merely an act put on for man’s benefit. If it is to be done at all God must be man. There could be no convincing focusing of real God in some strange semi-divine creature who enjoys supernatural advantages.

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