How Big is God? – Gennesaret Press

(Originally written around 2015.)

During the past few weeks, I have spent a considerable amount of time as part of a team tasked with writing a story to be presented at church. This was part of an extensive effort to determine the strategic spiritual direction of the church (at the local church level).

I worked as hard as I could to make it the best it could be. I viewed this as the most important piece of writing that I have ever done. By the end of the process, I was exhausted. I had used every bit of my energy in helping to develop a twenty to thirty minute presentation. Call it an even thirty minutes, and that is one-half of an hour. In the grand scheme of things, that’s only 1/48^th of one day (at least here on Earth, where our days are twenty-four hours). On other planets, your mileage may vary.

My efforts were far from perfect. Consider what the effort level would be to make it absolutely perfect. I can’t conceive that, really. I’m not even sure what perfect really means. For the sake of argument, let’s give that effort a value. Call it P (for Perfect).

Forty-eight of those Ps would be a perfect day; take that new value (48P) and multiply it by 365 days (ignoring leap year) to get 17520P.

(During all this, I’m ignoring the added complexity of ORDER … that is, perhaps it would be more perfect to rearrange the days in a different order … or rearrange the hours in a given day … )

So 17520P is the perfect year for one person. What’s the rating for one person’s perfect year, or perfect lifetime? What’s the rating for EVERYBODY’S perfect lifetimes in total?

The World Health Organization reports that from 2010 – 2013, the average lifespan worldwide is 71.0 years (both genders combined). So for a perfect life, on average, we have 71 times 17520P, or 1,243,920P.

That is per person. Another way to think about this is like this: the average person, worldwide, has over one million two hundred thousand half-hour time slots in his life.

The United States Population Fund reports that on Oct 31, 2011, the global population reached 7 billion. The Population Reference Bureau estimates that 107 billion people have ever lived.

Of course, the average age has varied considerably during the history of mankind. We’ll deal with that later. For now, let’s go with our 71 years.

For 107 billion people with an average age of 71 years, there is a total of 133099440000000000, or 1.3309944E17. For you who care (I do), that’s over 133 quadrillion half-hour time slots. That means 133 quadrillion P are needed to have them all be perfect.

Troubled that I used 71 years as the average age? Fine. Let’s be liberal and say that the average person only lived 35 years. Let’s cut the estimate IN HALF. That’s still over 66 quadrillion P.

The Bible tells us (in Psalms) that God already fore-ordained all our days. God’s grand universal plan is perfect.

Now, consider this. The Bible also tells us in Romans that: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (ESV)

At this point, I don’t know how to add in the true complexity, because not all of our lives have interacted with every other life that ever lived. But it’s clear that some interaction does go on, things do occur, and lives are impacted by each other. Somehow, God takes those quadrillions of Ps and has them work together to come out according to his plan.

How does that work? I have no idea.

We live in a world of free will. We are not God’s marionettes. I can choose to do within my time slot whatever it is I want to do. The contents of the time slots are up to me. But no matter what I choose, God’s plan will come to fruition, and in the end He will be glorified.

One option is to believe that God set up the world (a clockworks model), wound it up, and is sitting in the parlor watching the cuckoos pass by. That, however, flies in the face of Scripture, from which we learn that: God has a tender heart for the poor, the broken-hearted, widows, orphans, and the sick; God notes when a sparrow falls; God knows how many hairs are on your head; and, most of all, God loves you so much that HE came down and died in your place.

If that’s not enough, consider this: Depending on the source, the estimates for the number of stars in the sky (our galaxy plus all the other (estimated) galaxies) are between 1 sextillion (1E21) and 100 octillion (100E27) stars. That is, somewhere between 1 with 21 zeroes behind it and 1 with 29 zeroes behind it.

Then, consider the following. Isaiah 40:26 tells us: “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name.” Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

How’s that for a Big God?