An Inadequate God
Hey y’all, Rosy here, as you can see I’m being rightly shamed into blogging- the benefits of a prolific teammate! We’re probably going to be switching off days, so the slow days are mine. 
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I think it’s pretty natural to wonder – Why would God create a whole garden and say, “Eat fruit from any tree but that one.” The tree has the rather intriguing name of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And really, it’s hard to say that knowing about good and evil is a bad thing. But I’ve realised lately, from both reflection and a fantastic video from Father Barron I’ll link at the bottom, that it’s not about the knowing.
It’s about trying to be a god. Who alone knows all, understands all, encompasses all? Who alone defines what is right and what is not? God alone. And when we reject God, and try to do this for ourselves, we are not rejecting the idea of divinity, but styling ourselves as a god. It is fundamentally a failure of humility and the triumph of arrogance, that we all do in every single sin, to claim as our own the divine right to determine for ourselves right and wrong.
The vast majority of people will identify some basic things as wrong and some as right and will be correct. But contrary to the atheistic claims of liberation, it is the most limiting experience, because when we are the only filter we recognise, we are inherently fettered to ourselves – a small, small view in a large, large world.
Chesterton has a brilliant piece in his book Orthodoxy on madmen. As with anything of his, it’s eminently worth reading (and free on Gutenberg.org), but in particular I was struck by his hypothetical discussion with a madman who thinks he’s God. As he explains it, it may well be that the worldview of a madman, or, to be truthful, any man, can explain the world quite well, but it can only explain it in a small way, as we ourselves are small.
Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, “So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”
This is not an error restricted to madmen or unbelievers. It is the constant struggle of all of us against the ego. The difference between the Christian and the atheist isn’t that one is successful and one isn’t; it’s that one knows what he’s struggling against, and the other celebrates his own defeat by calling it a victory over superstition. But contrary to his claims, he has not made the world larger – he has only tried to squeeze it into the small confines of his own head.
Atheist Stephen Roberts has been overquoted now in his saying, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” The answer to it is really quite straightforward.
I contend that we are both theists. I just believe in a god bigger than myself. When you understand how inadequate I am as my own god, you will understand why I need a bigger one- and maybe even why you need one, too. If I am a sufficient standard of good and right in this world, then it is no great world at all. But if there is a god bigger than my constant failings, then he can make even those serve some good; then he is truly a great God of a great world. If my view alone is the vista, I will soon exhaust it. But if my view is only one part of a great vista, then there is so much more. And even if there isn’t, it’s a bigger world with my imaginary God than with myself alone.
(Yes, the great philosopher Puddleglum is also worth a reread!)
Thanks for reading. Comments and criticisms welcome.
-theRosyGardener
c.f. Father Barron has a fantastic video about sin in a series of YouTube vids taken at some conference or other. I heartily recommend them all, but “Father Barron comments on the Fall” was one that really got me thinking – and he even has another great GKC quote.
