Fair warning: despite my best efforts, this post is directed more at the proverbial choir than a general audience. Feel free to read along, but forgive the more pervasive use of Christianese than I hope to normally employ in this blog.

If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

I remember feeling as if the floor fell away upon reading that statement recently. I was shocked at how profoundly I needed a reminder of that fact and, oddly, how much joy it brought me. What was probably most shocking was the source of such (inadvertent) spiritual renewal: Richard Dawkins.*

As a believer, I should be in awe of God, instead he’s usually a mere afterthought, only to be considered at my convenience.

Yet there’s an inescapable and profound truth expressed by Professor Dawkins that a lot of us Christians don’t always acknowledge, even when we should embrace it. While others may disparage what we know about God and how we know it, the truth is that, even granting the presupposition that the Bible is true, we’re still very limited in our ability to comprehend him.**

The Bible gives us several examples that even the most pious amongst us (and I mean genuinely, not in the sarcastic sense that the word seems to have taken on) is completely unprepared for God’s full presence.

Take Isaiah’s encounter with him. Here we have someone who was a prophet, a man so intimately aware of God that he was tasked with communicating His will to the people. Here’s what he says when faced directly with God’s presence fully revealed:

5Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. – Isaiah 6:5, ESV, emphasis added

A man who is no stranger to visions or to the idea of God feels completely undone in His presence. Or, as one pastor citing this passage put it, Isaiah felt as though he would disintegrate, his very being devastated by the encounter. As Christians, we are clearly unprepared for the reality of what we claim to be true.

Paul directly addresses our limited understanding directly:

9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away… 12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully… – I Cor 13, ESV, emphasis added

These and other Biblical figures, even those who we credit as being the best theologians of our time, they all have had only the slightest glimpse of God, the merest understanding of him. It is extremely important to keep this in mind as we move forward in this discussion.

As a group, we Christians are often perceived as small-minded and arrogant. Unfortunately, it’s because we often are. This arrogance isn’t just expressed towards others, either. In my own prayers and spiritual life, I completely take for granted who I am approaching. And sometimes it takes an atheist to point out just how ludicrous it is that a being who could create this universe would pay mind at all to creatures such as us.

Yet it’s not Christian doctrine that’s arrogant as even the Bible points out:

3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him? – Psalm 8:3-4

So who does that leave?

We need to realize and act on our need of humility in the face of an overwhelming God, one that we can only begin to comprehend. One that fits Professor Dawkins’s quote more than he fits our personal dogma and limited imagination.

To be clear on my own stance, I personally believe we know more than we can handle about God through the Scriptures. But as Paul points out, that’s only the beginning of understanding. There’s an inevitable limitation to our comprehension if God is as big as he would need to be, as we claim he truly is.

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*With sincerest apologies to Professor Dawkins who I’m sure would be terribly upset to know he inspired someone in any way that can be considered spiritual or religious.

** For economy’s sake and since I’m talking mainly from my own experience as a Christian, I will stick to the commonly used male pronoun. Please don’t feel excluded if you believe otherwise!