Is your God getting bigger or smaller?

As you look at your life, what role does God play in the way you think about things? Because your sense of awe, wonder — worship, really — can shrink or grow depending on how you look at God.

For many people, the idea of "God" covers whatever they don't understand. "God did it." Some people call this the "god of the gaps." Whatever you can't explain you attribute to God.

The problem with this is that as we learn more, God becomes smaller. Many things humanity used to attribute to God (or the spiritual world) now have been discovered to have a clearly identifiable earthly cause.

God gets smaller.

But, if you start where scripture starts — in the beginning, God created everything — then every time we learn something new and amazing, our idea of God becomes larger. If God as a creative, loving, personal intelligent creator is your faith, your presupposition about life (as it is mine), then new knowledge does not threaten your faith, it expands it.

God gets bigger.

Ok, not really. God, in my faith, does not grow or shrink. God is who God is. But my ideas about God sure can grow or shrink, and my ideas about God affect my life. Is your God getting bigger or smaller?