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EA2: The transcendent is scary
...There is a Liliputian quality to evangelical faith. It seems to imagine God lying on the beach of our little kingdom, bound up with the cords of our propositions about him. That which is transcendent -- truth, beauty, goodness, Bjork -- is too large for our categories and propositions. Too large for our idea of God.

The idea that God might be bigger than we think -- bigger than we can know or imagine or explain -- can be terrifying. What if God should arise from the beach, shrugging off our tiny chains? Then we would no longer be in control.

What I'm calling "evangelical anxiety" is all about this fear of losing control. The nagging sense, lurking just below the surface, that we are not in control after all, no matter how much we insist we are. One result of this anxiety is a reflexive need to reassert that control, to interpret the world and respond to it in a way that reinforces the illusion that such control is possible....