20 Feb
All Theology really is… is thinking about God.
THIS IS WHAT WE THINK IN THREE WORD BLASTS…
unreal, mind blowing, ultra dimensional
loving, trustworthy, holy
love, grace, mercy
rescue, healer, truth
extravagant, graceful, merciful
all… knowing, powerful, forgiving
omnipotent, powerful, loving
grace, mercy, redemption
strength, loving, manly
love, holy, just
comforter, hope, purpose
jesus, merciful, loving
pleasing, thanks, love
worthy, merciful, comfort
indescribable, awesome, incredible
loving/mighty, father, savior
glory, power, love
compassion, daddy, love
love, all, selfless
raw, holy, power
It was so crazy to type these out and see them on paper! Look closely, there are several different threads in the above lists that are dictated by who we are and not who God is. Don’t get me wrong all of these things are true about God, but where are we getting our viewpoint. I want all of us to have a complete view of God.
Let’s come to God asking Him who He is, not assuming we already know and not making Him fit the image of who we want Him to be.
Posted by Ashley on 20.02.12 at 10:47 am
I read a really interesting quote on Sunday from NT Wright about our ideas of who God and Jesus are. It’s not 100% on topic, per se, but it’s along the same lines, so I figured I’d throw it out for discussion. Read it a couple of times and let it sink in… it’s really rocking my world right now…
“My proposal is not that we know what the word “god” means, and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross – and we somehow allow our meaning for the word “god” to be recentered around that point.”
I think often there is a disconnect in our minds between who God is, and who Jesus is. We know they’re kinda the same person… I mean they’re both God and they’re both part of the trinity, right? But we forget that they have the same heart and the same agenda and in essence, they are exactly the same person. Especially when it comes to Jesus. I mean, some of the stuff He does and says just doesn’t quite add up to how divinity should act. So we kinda just skim over those parts, because they don’t necessarily fit with our understanding of God. Things like Him calling the devout church people sons of Satan (Jn 8:39-47), or sitting around laughing and eating dinner with a bunch of sinners that were probably getting drunk and using foul language (Mt 9:10). These sorts of things… the God we sing about during worship on Sunday mornings wouldn’t do that stuff. Would He?
Perhaps instead of tacitly accepting that Jesus is like God, like we all inherently probably do… we should pause for a moment and think of it the other way around… that God is like Jesus. So the things you see Jesus doing, the things you hear Him say, the folks you see Him hanging with, the passion with which He loves, the way He chooses to save people… that, right there, is the in-the-flesh manifestation of God and His heart for us. And it looks alot different from most of our current ideas of who God is.
So if you take a look at Jesus, at all of his raw, untamed, unpredictable, unorthodox, even unacceptable actions and words and ways of doing things… what conclusions might we draw about who God is and what He’s like? What conclusions might you draw that are contra to the traditional or trendy descriptions or boxes that we try to stuff Him in?
I dunno, those are my questions and thoughts. What do you think?