As a human whose parents insisted she go to Sunday School, Church, and Youth Group... I have over the years developed, discarded, reorganized, and otherwise dismantled my views on religion about a million times over. I find that when it comes to monotheistic beliefs, people generally fall under two categories: Little God and Big God.
Little God Syndrome
Imagine for a second that God is a physical being who sits in the clouds and monitors specifically what every human being does. From these observations, God chooses favorite types of people and rewards his favorites with good luck and the promise of a life beyond death.
This is Little God Syndrome. I call it that because it implies that the center of God's universe is the Earth and that perhaps God is a satellite of Earth, only watching what happens to his favorites and basically damning the rest of the universe to a lonely hell. This gives humans room to interpret exactly what and who God's supposed favorites are, what that means for them, and the excruciating punishment for those who didn't make the cut.
People in the Little God category generally pick and choose parts of religious texts that they follow, while ignoring contradictory text, even from the same source, that would negate such belief or behavior. Also, people in this category tend to believe that there is no room for God to love or accept people outside of the interpreted group of favorites. Sometimes, we will find people who pretend to believe that God loves all people, but then when you dig into their actually feelings about people affiliated with specific groupings, you find that actually, their God doesn't accept those people because they are just wrong. In essence, their God is to little to accept or love more than a specified collective of people.
While, generally people with Little God Syndrome are harmless and encourage acts of kindness to their fellows, we can also categorize groups that use these concepts to spread hateful, one-sided, often political agendas that favor one group of chosen people over other groups of people. I find that it is within their religious and moral nature to believe that their interpretation of God's favorites is correct and that those people are automatically better than the rest of humanity and should be guaranteed certain accommodations in life.
Big God Syndrome
Imagine the enormity of the Universe. An immeasurable expanse of space with tiny dots of light within it. When we zoom on a dot of light, we find that that dot is actually a cluster of other lights which when we zoom in again, we find that each light is it's own cluster of galaxies. Each galaxy contains billions of more lights called stars. Each star has satellites called planets that orbit around it. Many planets in turn have satellites that orbit around them called moons.
This is the example I use to some up the enormity of God for people with Big God Syndrome. If God created the universe and the universe is so vast, how could God be anything smaller than the universe itself. There are a wide variety of people who fall into this category, but specifically agnostics and spiritualists seem to come to mind.
What I find with people in this category is that they truly have a sense that we are all one people with no barriers towards classifications or groupings of people that are specifically targeted within society as being "different". What I also come to find, is people within this category often find themselves explaining why science and God work together and not against each other. They will argue that scientific discovery is the equivalent of studying the massive concept that is God, the universe. There is a sense, when you talk to a Big God enthusiast, that occasionally God is less of an conscience entity choosing favorites, destinies, and monitoring human activity; but rather, God is more of a spiritual energy spread across space. Or perhaps, God is a particle within matter, which makes us literally all a part of God who is in everything.
The issues encountered with Big God people are their inability to truly connect with society enough to create positive change for the categories of people who are shunned from the Small God groups. People in this group tend to forget the important role society plays in the structure of life for all humans. They try to put themselves outside of society and therefore benefit the totality of human existence the least, unless possibly by accident.
This is the example I use to some up the enormity of God for people with Big God Syndrome. If God created the universe and the universe is so vast, how could God be anything smaller than the universe itself. There are a wide variety of people who fall into this category, but specifically agnostics and spiritualists seem to come to mind.
What I find with people in this category is that they truly have a sense that we are all one people with no barriers towards classifications or groupings of people that are specifically targeted within society as being "different". What I also come to find, is people within this category often find themselves explaining why science and God work together and not against each other. They will argue that scientific discovery is the equivalent of studying the massive concept that is God, the universe. There is a sense, when you talk to a Big God enthusiast, that occasionally God is less of an conscience entity choosing favorites, destinies, and monitoring human activity; but rather, God is more of a spiritual energy spread across space. Or perhaps, God is a particle within matter, which makes us literally all a part of God who is in everything.
The issues encountered with Big God people are their inability to truly connect with society enough to create positive change for the categories of people who are shunned from the Small God groups. People in this group tend to forget the important role society plays in the structure of life for all humans. They try to put themselves outside of society and therefore benefit the totality of human existence the least, unless possibly by accident.
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