Tuesday, February 25, 2014

What if God is too big?

Image source.


"You turn people back to dust,
    saying, 'Return to dust, you mortals.'
A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death-
    they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered."
Psalm 90:3-6

What if God's just too big to notice me?

He made the world, he loves the world, he loves people- but does he see individual people? We're all just here in a massive crowd... does God just see the crowd and love the crowd, or does he love each of us?

What if God's too big? And what if the world's too big?

The world is so big, you guys.

The earth turns and I get up in the morning while my family in America is sleeping. And I can't even call them because my phone doesn't do international calls. I can just email and skype.

The world is so big, and I live my life while my brothers and sisters in other countries live their lives, with their own cultures and habits I've never imagined. And we all just go on, oblivious to how the world works in other places, ignorant of what the human race is really like. We can only experience a small part.

There are billions of people, and each of us is just lost among them. The earth doesn't care. Does God care? Can God care about each person, or just he just see the big picture?

What if he just sees our lives come and go like blades of grass, and he blinks and a thousand years have already gone by?

What about when God sent the flood to kill everyone in the world, except Noah's family, because everyone was evil? Really? Everyone? God judged each individual person and decided each one deserved to drown, except for Noah's family? Or did he just look at society and make a sweeping generalization?

How about when God sent Moses to bring the Israelites out of slavery? They'd been slaves for 400 years. 400 years? Why did God let so much time go by? What about the people who lived and died and God got there too late to free them? 400 years is a long time.

Maybe it's not long for God. Maybe he just cared about saving the nation, not the individuals.

And when Joshua led them to take over the promised land, God said to just kill everyone who was living there. They'd just be a bad influence, apparently. But couldn't God see the individuals, each one with their own personality and ideas and character flaws?

Oh right, he had them not kill Rehab. Because she helped the Israelite spies. Right, just like in a movie, where the nameless character starts showing the hero pictures of his family, right before they have to face the enemy- you know that guy's not gonna die, because now we all like him and his family. And everyone else is a red shirt.

Does God really think that?

Does he see me? What if God is too big?

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 90. To read other people's posts, click here: Numbering Our Days Aright.

2 comments:

  1. The focus of the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus do point to a new perspective of God as focused on the individual. "No sparrow falls to the ground without the Father," and "the very hairs of your head are numbered" and so on. This is in keeping with the idea of the Old Covenant as being about externals and physicality, while the New Covenant is about the spirit and the heart of each person.

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  2. Oh, you are describing what I call my existential moments. The more you travel the more odd it feels to be at one place and not another. I am now aware of whole cutlures and habits I was not previously aware, but even then, yes, I can't help about all the cultures I have not experienced, and all the tribles I have never heard of. I would hpe that God cares

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