Sometimes you will hear people say, "I just can't handle it." It’s a descriptive phrase through which a person is attempting to communicate that something has entered their lives or their thinking that has overwhelmed them and since they “can’t handle it” they reject it or ignore it or bury it.
Is it possible that this is the thinking of some when it comes to God? For them to fathom God is just too big and so they reject or ignore what they can’t handle. I think it’s not just possible, it’s a reality. I see people everywhere that are seeking a God they can "handle" and that’s exactly what they get…. a God who they can manipulate, who is suspiciously like we are and whose mercy has been cut down to size.
When I think about all my conceptions about God over my lifetime, it's really not far off from this. The kind of God I was raised to believe in was a God who punished you if you were bad and rewarded you when you were good. That thinking over time had to be adjusted some because the realities of living demonstrated that the principle didn’t always occur as consistently as I thought it should. And so I began to embrace a God that would provide you with exactly what you need when you need it. It was a “the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away” mentality.
What a ridiculous way to think about God! If God knew that I would be having something like car trouble, why would God only send me just enough money to fix my car? Why not send me a better job? A better car? A winning lottery ticket? Is all God can think to do is send me just the exact amount of money to get the current car fixed?
This kind of thinking about God as a micromanager in our lives is prevalent, however. It's because most want a God they can handle…. a God they can manipulate. The fact is we all do it because we can't help ourselves. We can't relate to a mysterious God who acts in ways we cannot fathom. We'd rather have a tame God…. a God who fixes elections instead of stopping thousands of deaths…. a God that heals a sick person but doesn’t eradicate disease…. a God that provides a job but doesn’t eliminate poverty.
And the reason most of us would rather it be that way is because we can't handle the alternative…. free will. We can't handle the fact that the world is a mess because we've made it that way. God has given us free will and that means we have the ability to surprise him with our goodness or shock him with our evil. We have the power to do both.
God doesn’t manipulate elections or control world events or stop us from choosing to live however we please. This is the truth of free will. We can choose peace or we can choose war. We can choose retaliation or we can choose to break the cycle of violence. We can choose love or we can choose hate. We are free! And this is what terrifies us so much. If we are free then we only have ourselves to blame when things go terribly wrong. God isn’t punishing us…. we are merely the victims of our own "terrible human consequences."
If only we'd stop trying to create a God we can handle and give our lives over to a God that can handle us! If only we would embrace the mystery and stop trying to coax God into our own image. If only we would renounce our cleverness and embrace bewilderment. It is then, and only then, that we will we realize the true nature of God…. a God that grants us freedom, a God that grants us free reign in our lives, and a God that welcomes us with open arms when we seek to align ourselves to him.
I can't take a small God anymore. I can't handle it. I need a big God that I can never fully grasp. I need a God that continues to show me new sides of himself, continues to surprise me, delight me, perplex me and even anger me as generally he shows up in my everyday. This is the God I embrace…. a God of mystery, delight, wonder and awe whom I call Abba Father. Wow!
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