Theology for God's Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement
1. The God
The Christian faith is
founded on two truths. Both are mysteries, that is, truths we cannot figure out
or discover for ourselves not matter how much time, information, and insight we
might have. These two truths, realities, mysteries revealed in the Bible are
that God is not a singular being. God is one but differentiated within himself.
In theological terms, the Christian God is triune, three-in-one. The how-this-can-be
question cannot, of course, be explained but only described. Remember, we are
dealing with matters beyond human understanding or imagination. That’s why this
revelation of the triune nature of God makes the Christian view of Go utterly
unique among world religions.
1.1
God
is not like a Billiard Ball but like a Molecule
A billiard ball is a
complete and self-sufficient entity by itself. It needs nothing else to make it
what it is. All its interactions with other balls or the rails of the table are
external to what it is.
The Bible’s God is, as
noted, different. While one, God is self-differentiated. That is, the one God
is always and at the same time the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.[1]
A molecule is a better way to picture the triune God of Christian faith. “Molecules are made up of
atoms that are held together by chemical bonds. These bonds form as a result of
the sharing or exchange of electrons among atoms.”[2]
An oft-used diagram of the
trinity is similar to this design:
A
molecule illustrates the differentiation within an entity though it fails, as
do all illustrations of the trinity, to capture the oneness that the trinity
diagram does. Nevertheless, I believe it is a helpful image to keep in mind in
tandem with the billiard ball image given that the default image of God in our
culture is largely that of the billiard ball.
That’s
about as far as we can go in describing the nature of the God of the Bible.
Let’s look next at its significance.
1.2
What
Difference Does It Make That God Is Triune?
“God is love” (1 Jn.4:8).
The triune God of Christianity is a fellowship or communion of love. The Father
loves the Son, the Son returns the love of the Father, and the Spirit is the
love the Father and Son share. God cannot, then, be a billiard ball kind of deity.
For love is a relationship between persons. It is other-directed. Love is about
communication, communion, and community. None of which is possible if God is a
billiard ball. Sufficient and complete in and of himself, he cannot be love or
love. The only “person” such a God could love is himself. And we don’t call
that love; we call it narcissism.
God’s nature as triune also
makes it possible for us to experience and believe that God is indeed love.
Think about it like this. You are in desperate trouble. Mortal trouble. Trouble
you cannot get yourself out of. God claims that he loves you to the uttermost and
will himself to do everything necessary for your rescue. But then he sends
someone else to do and endure the dirty work of actually setting you free.
Unless that someone else is also somehow God, then God is not love. He has not
come himself as love requires and as he said he would.
Such a billiard ball deity,
lacking his own experience of communication, communion, and community, cannot
offer this to us either. The only relationship we can have with such a God is external,
creature to Creator. Based in obligation and duty, obedience is the way the
creature keeps him or herself right with the Creator. Thus we are locked into a
legalistic moralism from the beginning.
Fortunately, the God we meet
in the Bible is defined by love. Communication, communion, and community are
who he is. He can and does, therefore, offer them to us in offering himself to
reclaim and restore us to life in him.
The billiard ball deity
cannot but be, to us sinners, what I call a “God with a Scowl.” One whose
disposition toward us is performance based and punishment-focused. Fear is the
default response to such a God. A molecule-like God, which we have claimed the
biblical God is, offers love and life to his creatures in all that he does. Our
sin does not put him off but catalyzes overtures for reclaiming and restoring
his creatures to what he always intended for them.
The difference seeing God as
triune makes is that we can be certain that in all things the Father, the Son,
and the Spirit are reaching out to us in ways too numerous to count in the
interest of the full flourishing of his creatures and creation.[3]
This leads us to consider God as missionary in the next section.
1.3
A
Missionary God
“God is love” (1 Jn.4:8).
Given that love is other-directed always seeking and acting for the good of
those loved, God can be nothing other than a missionary God. In creation God
made something and someone other than himself to share love and life with
forever on his good creation. God always intended to come and be with his
creatures. Even to the point of becoming one of them. The Son was always coming
in the flesh as the fulfilment of God’s desire and purpose to be with his
creatures in as profound a way as possible. Thus, the Father intends to “send”
the Son to his creatures while the Son is “sent” by the Father to them in the
power of the Spirit. This sending and sent God is what I mean by a missionary
God.
Even after humanity revolted
against him God never acquiesced in that revolution. No, God’s response to this
heinous ingratitude and arrogance is to keep seeking his creatures and sending
them a way to be reconciled and restored to him. These are the chief benchmarks
of the biblical story as well as the strategy of the triune God in achieving
his ultimate purposes.
-The people of
Abraham and Sarah, eventually Israel, were this way,
-Covenants initiated
and guaranteed by God established this family among all the families of earth
as the one which bears the destiny of the whole human family.
-The Kingdom of God
established God’s authority and power over all the nations of the earth.
-The Temple pointed
to that ultimate fulfilment of God’s creational dream – his presence with his
people in loving communication, communion, and community.
The Father sends the Son
and, through him, the Spirit to earth. The Spirit in turn sends Abraham’s
people, Israel and the church, into the world. The church, in the power of the
Spirit, then equips and sends its members into the world of their daily lives
as witnesses to God’s love.
Thus God’s whole plan is
missionary through and through. He himself is a missionary (sending and sent)
God as he is a God of love. His people (Israel and the church) are a missionary
(sent and sending) people who send their members into the nitty gritty of
everyday life to serve God. From the macro (the whole cosmos) to the micro (the
individual believer) all God’s purposes, plans, and people are missionary.[4]
A missionary triune God who
is always and in everything love – that’s the Christian God.[5]
1.4
A
Subversive Counter-Revolutionary God
All this means that our
missionary triune God is a subversive counter-revolutionary God. By that I mean
that the Christian God is the God who sponsors what C. S. Lewis called a “great
campaign of sabotage.” That’s because, again according to Lewis, we live in “Enemy-occupied
territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the
rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us
to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”[6]
This “campaign of sabotage” reached
its climax and definitive expression in Jesus Christ but it began much earlier.
Immediately after humanity revolted against God in fact. God’s passion and activity
after that revolt turned subversive and counter-revolutionary[7].
-subversive: to undermine and
counteract the way of life sin inscribed in his creation through “yeast”-like
penetration of lives through relationships.
-counter-revolutionary: to
contest this sinful way of life as it is embodied in the patterns, systems, and
institutions of the world through acts of peace-making and justice.
His world now filled with all sorts of
violence, oppression, and injustice, those theologians are right who claim that
God has a “preferential option for the poor.” This means that in seeking for
justice and right relationships at every level of society God takes the side of
those damaged and kept down by the privileged and powerful. This divine taking
of sides is in the interest of the freedom and salvation of all, both oppressed
and oppressor alike. Both are locked into a losing struggle for all involved.
By making the plight of the poor and needy his own, God highlights this
struggle and the direction its resolution must take.
So God, the Bible’s God, is a
subversive and counter-revolutionary God as he acts in a world fallen
catastrophically away from his good design and intention. As we will see now,
his people will follow suit as they serve him in that same world.
[2] http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/molecule.
[3] “We
know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for
those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom.8:28 CEB). Though “all
things” are not good, God is at work in them to accomplish his good purposes
for us.
[4] My ebook The Purpose, the Plan, and the People: Why the Gospel is Bigger and Better than We
Ever Imagined spells this out in more detail.
[5] I have discussed
love, life, communication, communion, and community here are characteristics of
God. The Bible tells us much about God and we will discover them along the way
in my exposition. Those taken up here are, in my judgment, paramount to the
Bible’s portrait of God.
[6] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity ……
[7] The terms subversive
and counter-revolutionary usually (though not necessarily) signal opposing
political perspectives (liberal and conservative respectively). I pair them in
my formulation to suggest that I am not promoting a partisan perspective. I
believe a biblical perspective will be eclectic and out-of-the-box rather than
predictably doctrinaire.
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