Open Letter to a Too Small God
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-sandlin/open-letter-to-a-too-smal_b_4958492.htmlMark Sandlin
PC(USA) Minister & co-founder of The Christian Left and owner of TheGodArticle.com.
Posted: 03/14/2014 12:04 pm EDT Updated: 03/14/2014 12:59 pm EDT Print Article
I don't really know how to say this. Honestly, if you were bigger this would be so much easier. If you were bigger, you could take the questions and I wouldn't be so worried about hurting you.
Look, I've been trying to make this "us" thing work for awhile now, but it just feels so increasingly and shamefully dishonest that I can't take it anymore. This is it. You are just too small of a god. We're finished.
I've known it for awhile, but it all came together when I was watching Cosmos. I'd never heard of this Giordano Bruno fellow but I like what he had to say when the institutional Church of the day came after him for entertaining rational thought (a.k.a., thinking for himself, not towing the party line). He said, "Your God is too small." Frankly, in those five little words he completely nailed the problem.
Any understanding of God that cannot withstand questions and rational thought is a "too small" god.
I'm sorry, but that's you.
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Ditto everything you said!
I was raised a Humanist by parents who were "born" Jewish, raised my daughter within a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, and have become something of a Pagan in my later years, though I don't practice anywhere or with anyone. I simply felt, or became aware, of the "divinity" in nature. I probably throw a little Taoist thought in there as well: I can tell when things are going right, feel like I'm going with the flow.
I haven't spent as much time studying Buddhism as I would like to, some day! 
I am referring to those who hold religious power, the entrenched religious establishment to whose benefit it is to claim to know who or what god is, and to have the direct uplink. Be they the Roman Catholic Church, the "owners" of the fundie movement in the Christian church in this country, or hard-right Imams...those who feel entitled to have us send them money to keep their gig going. They define god, as it serves their own purposes - money, power. If they keep her/him a "mystery," then we are beholden to them.
On the other hand, the writings of Karen Armstrong ("A History of God" and other books, makes it clear to me, that for some, many perhaps, this mystical aspect of an unknowable but all-powerful force, is simply a comfort and a solace...and who am I to deny them that? 
I have been reading more about the unknowable god. It's similar to the blind men and the elephant. Perhaps people touch a different part and that is why so many come away with a different idea about what they have touched.
In looking for language to describe where I find myself, the word "skeptic" has an increasing appeal, but apatheist also speaks to me.
And I agree about letting people have whatever it is that gives them strength, comfort, guidance and solace.
to be on the same page with you!
became a cop. All the chaos, uncertainty, and day to day dealings with his era's ne'er do wells may have been the backdrop for his staunch Catholicism. Mass every day at 7AM, day in and day out. Orderly and familiar.
I know a lot of people who went to church after 9/11.
And then there is community and the sense of belonging.