Dear Pogue,

This is a letter that I have started several times only to find it populating the waste bin. I know what I feel and want to say but have never found the right way to express it. You see, this letter will start with an idea, a rather passionate one, something I need to say, and before long it will take on a life of its own, choosing its direction. It’s all an adventure.

Here’s my issue. When I talk about God I have come to realise that the entity that I am defining is not understood by others in the same way I do. What they’re hearing is not what I am saying! Indeed I get to wondering if we are even thinking about the same entity. So, Pogue, I have a question for you, even a challenge:

Are you a big Godder or a small Godder?

Implicit in the term God is the notion of a supreme being. Let’s choose to disregard the mythologies of the world for the sake of this letter (although I have always thought Odin’s ale hall sounded pretty cool). You and I are part of a monotheism, and as such believe in the existence of only one true god. This God we believe to be all-powerful and all-present. Like, no one messes with this dude! For us God has both created all there is but remains intimately involved with each one of us, God’s essence and essential character being love. Indeed, in the book Jesus says: “On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Things don’t get any more intimate than that. We are a party to God’s very essence. Created in God’s image we are told elsewhere. Further, Jesus, God incarnate, God and man sharing a single form advises that those who follow after him will do not only the things he’s done, heal, work miracles, turn a little water into wine, but also do greater (John 14:12). In summary, God, He/She, and you/me are intimately involved, related, intwined and as such are enabled to do the deeds God does.

Heres to the big God dreams of your heart.

Anon

Now I know and have met those who wish to place a divide between us and God but based on my experience and God’s infinite love, I don’t buy it. Anyway, as I look at it, we are intimately caught up in God. The depth of that intimacy is only limited by our own desire to engage. As one man said: “The issue isn’t on God’s end”.

So, and here comes my rant, why do so many claiming to be believers, purporting to be in relationship have such a limited view of God?

What do I mean?

Well, tell me where I can find the things that aline with the activities of God? Seen a healing recently? Maybe a miracle or two? I am sure you read random reports of such things and a search of the internet will turn up examples, but my understanding is that the supernatural is the food of the children. We should not be just religious institutes filled with words but gatherings filled with words and deeds. Am I on my own in this line of thought? Actually I know I’m not as I’ve met others usually in the same place as me, on the outside.

Let me repeat myself. We are in a relationship with the ultimate entity. God is for us, loving us. We’re in God’s image. We’re encouraged, no, told to behave like God and do like things as modelled by Jesus and others. Yet most live meagre, powerless lives, a whimper of what has been promised us.

The question remains:

Are you a big Godder or a small Godder?

Some tell me God doesn’t do the so called miraculous anymore. It all ceased with the completion of the Bible. Small Godders.

Others tell that there are selected few who are chosen for such things. Small Godders.

Then there are those who believe being in an open relationship with God, indulging in silence, silence being a language of God, who meditate, who lay their beliefs aside in order that they can experience everything they can of God. Those who have come to understand our relationship is as the wave with the ocean. We are of God and should live as such. Walk in the masters shoes. Be big Godders.

Then our religious gatherings will breath life again. I live in a land where those attending religious meetings declines year on year. I watch religions across the world in all their diverse expressions bow to politics, extremists, commercialism, craving after power but not realising they already have power available surpassing that which the world can give. Small Godders!

Change is coming. Continue to trust God. He has never failed you and He never will. Change is coming.

Anon

I have searched for a place I can be with likeminded people, those who cannot accept a small, insipid god. I look for big Godders.

As John Lennon wrote: “Some may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”. Strange quote to choose from a song that disclaims religion, amongst other things, but it works.

So, rant over. What is it to be? Big Godder or small Godder?

Yours, ranted out!

Wic