The Size of God
Originally published on November 04th, 2018
I have a friend who once tried to measure the size of God. His mathematical and logical nature made it hard to explain how he did it to my brain that is constantly filled with lines from poetry and song lyrics instead of formulas, but he tried. From what I could gather, it had to do with stars and the distance between planets.
I think.
Either way, I find the concept really cool. Personally, I'm definietly more of the type that's okay noticing something cool and being okay with just looking at it instead of disecting it to find out more, but I still found this facinating. We were lab partners in Chemistry at the beginning of my Junior year of high school, and would spend a few chemistry experiments going back and forth between recording observations and discussing beliefs and ideas.
Towards the end of that school year, I ran for Religious Vice President for my school's SA. The thought of running for anything had been running around in my head for a few months, but originally I'd planned on running for something smaller, like one of the positions for Officer at Large. I only decided to run for RVP about a week before the election after learning that the current RVP wasn't planning to run again. To make a short story even shorter, I ran unopposed, still took it very seriously, and I was the RVP for my school's SA during the 2017-2018 school year.
The night of my Junior/Senior banquet, after much of the excitement had died down and I was sitting in a chair clutching about five candles, I got to talking with the past RVP, who ended up being one of my best friends and is now my college roommate (hi, Annaliese). We talked about a few things, from our mutual interest in blogs to our differences in candle preferences. At one point we got to talking about being the Religious Vice, and how we had both run unopposed, and at the same time we both said something like "it's weird that no one else wants to be the RVP." Neither of us could think of a definite answer as to why this is the case, but we both figured it had to do with no one wanting to seem "too religious."
If that is the reason, I completely understand. I opened my speech by saying that even though my dad is a pastor, I didn't want that mixed with the fact I was running for RVP make me seem like some sort of religious nut. For the entirety of high school, I had been really self conscious about my spirituality and how I wanted others to perceive me when it came to God, religion, etc. The idea that someone would not want to run for a position with the word "religious" in the title for fear they would be deemed too religious didn't surprise me. Over the years I'd stopped thinking of myself as religious and more as a spiritual person, so holding the title of RVP felt a little odd.
I tell you both of these stories because I've been thinking lately about the different ways people go about their religious/spiritual sides of life. My friend I mentioned earlier is definitely logical, and maybe he connects with God through science. Other people I know connect with God through music or nature, and some really do find him in church and with sermons. We all measure the size of God in different ways, and that's a good thing. I may not have a desire to measure the actual size of God, but I know that he is big enough to be found in lots of different ways. We don't have to be super religious to find God, because I don't think he needs us to be something we simply aren't. I believe that all we need to do is find a way that works for us and be willing for that way to evolve over time if it does. God is more than big enough for us to find him however we need to.