The Trivialization Of God: The Dangerous Illusion Of A Manageable Deity

"It May Well Be That The Worst Sin Of The Church At The End Of The Twentieth Century Has Been The Trivialization Of God." The God of the Scriptures is a holy God-wholly other, radically different from anything else in creation, terrifying in greatness, and utterly awesome in love. This is a God who transcends our understanding and is unknowable except by divine revelation—the God described by the author of Hebrews as "a consuming fire." But the church has reduced this God of glory to more manageable proportions. We have trivialized the God of glory. Visit an average congregation on a Sunday morning, and you will likely find a congregation comfortably relating to a deity who fits nicely within precise doctrinal positions, or who lends almighty support to social crusades, or who conforms to individual spiritual experiences. But you will not likely find much awe. The result is a diminished influence of the church on the world around it—a sad reflection of the manageable deity we have put in God's place. Donald McCullough calls us to abandon the fleeting comfort of our substitute gods and embrace the God far more powerful, exciting, loving, and unfathomable than any image of God we can conjure up. Those who know and follow this God are different—a people transformed by a holy God into a holy, worshiping, loving community that reveals an awesome God to a needy world.