too small

Every so often I find myself asking "Why?" It is usually a pointless question in the sense that however careful and well educated we become there will always be points at which we cannot overcome the sadnesses and sin of human existence.

The news shows us pictures of all sorts of disasters daily and I find myself creeping towards trying to make sense of things in a rationalistic way, trying to control my surroundings with reason and cleverness, trying to stick God into a linear construct of some sort of mathematical reasoning which makes sense to me.

But, whilst this is very normal, it is also very fruitless. The Old Testament often uses big language for God - especially God in nature and action. This language is only the tip of the iceberg - a taster of divinity. Our senses only allow for a taster - as the Old Testament concepts of holiness, of otherness and danger seem to capture so well.

The immediacy of Christianity, God made human, is a contrast - at least in some ways. We know what is is like to be human and the temptation is, instead of the language we use being simply a small part of understanding God, we start to see it as the truth of God. After all what is beyond human understanding - we simply do not know.

As a child I was frightened of those pictures inside pictures which go on forever - getting smaller and smaller as they move away from you. I could get lost inside one of those, I reasoned, because I could never find the end. I would close my eyes and try to remove the spectre of being drawn into pointless repetition which I could not contain.

So are our questions an endless line of reason, trying to hold the world inside ourselves or are they something else - the expression of faith in a God who holds the world in God's hands? There is a difference - one is contained thinking where we try to squash everything into a box of tricks which we can pull out at a moments notice - and I think there are many denominations who attempt this by rules and formularies - the effect of which are to stop questions - after all if you have to ask you must be doing something wrong.

We are curious people and asking is natural, not understanding is part of who we are - but that is where we sometimes have to stop. The questions, those universal and uncomfortable things which we find in our world, have to be framed in the mindset that we will only get at the tip of the iceberg through all our reasoning and logic. God is not to be encompassed or defined by us and this may feel uncomfortable or, even, naive at first. Ultimately though, a God who is the sum of our reason, is not God - he or she is an idol.

It is OK to ask, OK to be angry - it is our duty to make the world as good as we can make it - but not to define and squirrel our faith away to the point where we are simply looking in the mirror at ourselves. That is way too small.