"God is Infinite"

People who picture the “Master of the Universe” as the “Biggest Boss” of all believe that they are expressing pro­found respect for God.

They think that they are not like those picayune people who believe that God has nothing better to do than check the petty details of every individ­ual’s life.

For even as a parent, how much do I know and care about every little thing that my children do?

There are so many small details about which I am completely ig­norant.

I care about the big things. I may think that I have a broader view; I see the vastness of the universe, and therefore I infer that God cannot possibly have time for details.

But when I say that God does not deal with detail, I am in fact cutting God down to my own measure.

No matter how much I enlarge it, it is still my own picture, extended: God is very important, a very important per­son, and therefore God is like the big boss, a big ruler, a big president–only more so.

However big I may make it, it still remains basically an enlargement of a small human picture.

The reason a human boss does not know or care about what happens to the paper clips in the office is that he has a limited mind.

Only certain things can fit into a limited storage house; the rest has to be discarded.

The boss must therefore decide what is important to him and what is not; he cannot afford to clutter his mind with minute, ir­relevant details, or his functioning will be hampered.

The bigger the boss, the greater the number of details, and therefore the more generalized the items with which he can deal.

If we say that God does not care about this or that, it actually means that we cast God in the big boss image.

Unlike the biggest of bosses, though, God is infinite.

Infinity is a difficult concept, even in mathematics.

In re­lation to God, it is more difficult yet.

Something infinite has no boundaries; there is no limit to the number of de­tails it can contain.

Moreover, it is a basic mathematical fact that compared to infinity, every other number is zero, and every other size is equal.

One million, or two thou­sand quadrillion, when compared to infinity, are both ex­actly zero.

Theologically, saying that God is infinite means that all the details become equally insignificant, regardless of their size.

In that sense, a galaxy, with all the gigantic stars it contains, is exactly equal to the small­est particles of an atom.

Therefore, if it makes any sense for God to care about what happens to a galaxy, it makes exactly the same amount of sense for God to care about what happens to a blade of grass.

Compared to God, they are of exactly the same magnitude.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz