Marginal Christianity

What is God’s plan for us and our world? In creating us and our world God intended that we be his royal priests in reflecting his will and character in all the world and nurturing and guiding creation to it full flourishing as a temple for God to dwell in with for all eternity. Why are we not what God intended us to be? Unfathomably, we rejected our identity and vocation as God’s royal priests by trying to run our lives apart from God. Sadly, we only succeeded in turning our lives over to other powers and forces thereby ceding to them the power and authority we should have wielded and which they, in turn wield in dehumanizing and destructive ways. What has God done about this? Loving us beyond measure and merit, God has passionately and relentlessly sought to reclaim and restore us to our created identity and vocation as his royal priests. -God called Abraham and Sarah to be the parents of a new family, Israel, through whom he would bless the world. -When eve...

  1.     The Bible’s God does NOT seek or enjoy punishing human beings (Lam.3:33)!   The “God with a Scowl” of such recent infamy is not the Christian deity. That “god” is creation of pagan thought, unworthy of either deity or humanity. The Christian God, on the other hand, is wholly love, implacably love. He will exercise “tough” love as discipline, as necessary but this love is always aimed at our restoration and growth.   2.     The Bible’s God is NOT uninterested or unaffected by our prayers.   Though it is popular to claim that prayer is good for the one who prays (and this certainly true), that God neither wants, or responds to our prayers is false. In fact, the chief good prayer does for the pray-er is to enter into a mystery – a relationship with a God who is not all uninterested in us and our perspective on things, our needs and wants. And one who does respond and under whose sovereign our lives and history itself u...