GOD IN A BOX

When I was a boy, the nun who was my first grade teacher, Sister Antonita, marched us in the sanctuary of Saint Athanasius church in West View, PA. She pointed to the altar, containing the box with the newly consecrated Eucharist. I can't remember her exact words but my seven year-old brain interpreted it as "God is in that box." Imagine the Infinite God contained in a box in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. How I wanted to sneak back in later and let God out of that box. The cartoon below shows how God is not bound by man's religion or theology. Evangelicals try to confine God to a partisan political agenda. They also create an evangelical bush league of Christian music, movies, books, and schools to isolate them from the secular world, thus separating into a subculture. They view the world through a binary of secular and sacred. They believe God is working only in their Christian subculture. Whatever box man forces God into, God kicks the box over & laughs. God is Infinite, and everywhere present. Fundamentalists told me as a youth Hell is where people are "separated from the presence of God." King David taught the opposite. "Where can I flee from Thy presence?" he wrote in Psalm 139. "If I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou art there." God is omnipresent. Yes, He's in the box but He's also outside the box, beneath the box, above the box. There is nowhere in which we can be separated from His presence. Neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor height nor depth can separate us from the unconditional love of God. God transcends man's words and understanding. You don't have to be owned & bound by any man or group's definition or dogma. God is like a mirror. The mirror doesn't change but each person sees something different in the mirror and may explain God differently. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts..."