Supersize living throws search for God off balance

Stopped at a stoplight in Sandpoint the other day, I found myself behind a very large truck with a vanity license place to match: “SUPERSZD.”

Fast-food restaurants have advertised supersized portions for some time, but this macho declaration was more than I was prepared to dismiss.

It provoked me to think of the supersizing we are exposed to in our American culture. Certainly the Gulf oil spill disaster is supersized. The earthquake devastation in Haiti is supersized, as is the recovery effort being made by countless people and organizations.

Just take a few minutes for yourself and list the supersizing you see in your own life. I quickly think of obesity of men and women – perhaps partly a result of supersized meals in most restaurants?

I think of mega-churches, credit card debt, home mortgages, medical costs, Internet information (and misinformation), and so much more.

It seems like “life” – the experience, not the magazine – can’t amount to much anymore if it isn’t delivered supersized.

Then I read a passage from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is reported to tell followers, “Do not worry about life … don’t worry about tomorrow … today’s trouble will be sufficient for today.” (Matthew 6: 25-34).

Please savor the deeper wisdom of this passage. This is the passage that immersed me in what I’ve called God’s Radical Hospitality since 1994.

“Sufficient.” It also means “enough,” as in Deuteronomy 15: 1-11, where the “year of release” is described.

This time was meant to be for the releasing (forgiving) of debts. If God was obeyed, there would be no poverty.

The Israelites are told to “open your hand, lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” God’s Radical Hospitality was at work as the Israelites wandered for 40 years.

For us today, when is “enough” enough? I don’t think we ask that question often enough or seriously enough. If we did, supersizing would get downsized – on so many levels.

Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book “When Everything You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters” is spot-on. To find meaning in our daily lives is what is most important.

Supersizing the “things” in our lives is at best a diversion from that life-search. At worst, supersizing diminishes our lives.

Ironically, supersizing our lives can also downsize our God-vision.

It’s an old story with a modern twist: placing our own supersized desires at the center of our lives to make ourselves feel or look more significant than we feel. We seductively let other gods crowd God out.

J.B. Phillips’ 1952 spiritual classic “Your God Is Too Small” certainly speaks clearly to yet another dimension of our dilemma today.

In a world of expanding cultural, scientific, medical and social possibilities, our ideas of God have stagnated. Adults too quickly often settle for understandings they learned as little children.

Phillips describes God, among other ways, as a “resident policeman,” a “grand old man” and a puppeteer directing the universe on a whim.

We easily settle for a God who is insufficient for our needs. Or we may settle for no God at all.

Our traditional religious formulas and beliefs too quickly limit God only to our self-centered imaginations. God is so much more. So are we.

Supersized living too easily throws our search for God out of balance. Look for God in the small smiles of simple joy, or in the sadness of a grieving adult child for his dying father.

See God in small things. Then life, not things, becomes supersized.