What Are We Going To Do Tonight, Brain?

In 1999 I met Jeff Hammond. My brother, Emmet, and I had traveled to Indonesia to “research ministry opportunities and help out however we could.” Some friends in Australia had introduced us to Jeff and encouraged us to connect when we got to Jakarta. So, some flights and busses and taxis and emails and phone calls later we sat in a restaurant in a “suburb” of Jakarta with Jeff and his wife Annette. After a few pleasantries “the question” came up as it always does when expats and missionaries and such meet overseas.

“So, Jeff, what are you up to?”

“Taking over the world.”

No hyperbole, no humor, no arrogance, just completely serious. On the day-to-day Jeff was working throughout Indonesia building unity among the different denominations at the local level with a concentration on grace, prayer, and signs and wonders. But this was a stepping-stone toward the real goal of “taking over the world.”

Hearing this man say this set me free. Anything less than total global domination became too small of a strategic goal. This attitude integrated nicely with my developing kingdom theology and open, progressive, quasi-universalist eschatology along with my burgeoning rejection of the neo-platonic underpinnings of some of dominant Christianity’s beloved doctrines.

Let me tell you a story.

At the beginning God brought this world into being. He did this because he thought it would be worth doing. He formed and sculpted the world doing, by his standards, a good job of it all along the process. Till at one point he said, “Yah, that’s pretty good I reckon. I am about done with working on it from the outside. I will now get in there and finish the work.” So God made humans to be his own idol of himself, to be his very presence in the world and put his life and power into them so that he could finish what he started through them. To have them go out and subdue the earth, to finish forming the formless and filling the void.

A significant problem developed when the humans set up an abstract system of rules about fairness over against mere direct obedience to God. They obeyed the rules as if the rules were God. So, to protect the as yet unfinished world from accelerated damage, God removed his life and power from them and the “complete the world” project went on hold. The whole earth has been groaning for that life and power to return so that it could finally be completed and actually get started with its real story.

For thousands of years God worked to disabuse the humans of their infatuation with law and judgment and to retune them to grace and obedience. Finally he put his own image back in the world again to decisively and concretely enact his own obedience and grace in the history of the world. The result being that the presence and power came again into those humans who accepted that grace and obedience and finally the stalled completion of the world got back on track.

We now work in grace and obedience for the fullness of creation. Not bound by law and judgment but filled with the life and power of God to complete what God has begun.

Now, a consistent problem with all theology is that it is problematic. Every way of telling has it’s problem verses. What I like about this story is that it provides a robust explanatory matrix that significantly shifts perspective on a number of historically intractable problems ranging from the problem of evil to foundations for evangelism given the universal grace of God to the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in the movement from “Old” to “New” covenants. But what really gets me about this story is that it is truly and deeply beautiful. The other thing is that it provides an organic impetus (nearly as a categorical imperative) for “mission.” We all know that mission is important but we seem to be at pains to say why in a way that doesn’t continue to feel like it is tacked on rather than absolutely fundamental to our very existence. In this story salvation and mission and calling and existence are absolutely inextricable. We as humans exist to be the very presence of God in the world to complete the creation that is still “under construction” and in Jesus we have been reinstated as that presence to fulfill that calling and re-empowered to live the mission to all the world.

In this telling, evangelism and discipleship cannot separate. Rather, our fundamental human purpose dictates that all our life, including our human interactions drive toward the completion of creation. When It comes to other humans we work to empower more competent world builders. From this perspective evangelism and discipleship are exactly the same thing. So we go out and preach the gospel in all things because that is what Jesus commanded us to do and also because the gospel is the power of God, living and active, the salvation and freedom and empowerment to competently and consciously participate as wholly engaged and alive humans, integrated images of God, ushering in the New Heavens and New Earth, the completion of this world.

We have been given the honor and the responsibility of materially participating in and contributing to the completion of creation. I want to see what happens when the creation is complete and the real story gets rolling. I look forward to the resurrection so that I can get in on that story. I work now to invite and equip as many as I possibly can as well as I possibly can to be world creators, like our Father, together with me. I work now to hone my skill as a craftsman in the likeness of Jesus working by obedience and grace and cunning strategies as one called to participate in completing this world.

I work with a development organization. We work at the intersection of care for at-risk children and community development. We are not street corner witnessers, however we do not hide the one who we serve. We are working through trial and error and (hopefully) the inspiration of the Spirit to develop structures of human interaction that are self reinforcing and that produce ever increasing positive externalities. We are working on food security because there are no hungry people in the Kingdom of God. We are working on solving problems of abuse because there is no abuse and are no victims in the Kingdom of God. We are working primarily with children because it is more effective to shift a social structure by shifting those who are coming into it than to attempt to shift those who have a vested interest in the status quo, this is not a “burden” or “calling,” it is goal-oriented pragmatism.

Now, 15 years after I met Jeff, I am working with an organization whose marketing talks about “sustainability through entrepreneurism,” “deinstitutionalization of orphan care,” and “deployable models of effective development.” Bullshit NGO/UN terms that I hate but that are helpful to both indicate and obfuscate that what we are really about is executing a legit plan to achieve total global domination. Like Jeff, we are not kidding. Like Jeff, we are not overstating our goals. Like Jeff, we are not boasting. This is a weight and a responsibility that is only achievable at the intersection of the full grace of God and the intense and sustained effort of people. Our true success is measured by our participation in manifesting the fullness of the Kingdom of God, by how well we participate in God’s work to complete the creation.

You can do much worse with your life than to try to tell a beautiful story.

This Is What A Lay Up For A Major Slam Dunk Looks Like

I recently returned from Thailand working with The Charis Project. This is a major highlight from that trip that I recently shared on the Charis Blog. It is so Important to me that I need to share it here as well.

On our Face Book page a short while ago I said that it looked as though we were on a layup for a slam-dunk. This is what I was talking about.

We have been working with a group of people in Mae Sot for about a year. We have been moving slowly and working at getting to know each other and to understand how, and if, our visions intersect and how, and if, we will be able to work well together.

That work is ready to take the next step.

On this last trip we spent an extended period of time discussing in-depth where to move forward and they were already on-board with where we see going.

The de facto leader of the group is named Philip. His father-in-law led in founding a college for hill-tribe peoples and Philip worked there as a teacher. In fact he was one of Judah and Saeng Chen's* teachers when they went there.

This group in Mae Sot is already working responsibly to build up, support, and empower children of the Burmese migrant and refugee community in the area. They have very little in terms of resources aside from the income they themselves earn as laborers and they do not ask for handouts. Instead they have been envisioning businesses that they could start to do a better job of supporting the work they are doing with the children.They are educated, they are motivated, they are hard-working, and they have already begun to innovate.

They do not want to live on donations because they see begging, even for a very good cause, as a weakness that they would very much like to avoid.

Philip and I excited about our vision for moving forward in Mae Sot

They are about the perfect partners for the Charis Project. They are thrilled with our vision for integrating entrepreneurism and the care for at-risk children. They see that what we envision pushes beyond what they thought possible and are excited to bring this all together. They and we are becoming us.

They brought to our discussions two or three business ideas that they had already been thinking about and over the course of our conversations we together came up with half-a-dozen more workable business concepts.

Now, the step we are working on next, is to model, assess, and select the best of these concepts to move forward on, to invest in, and to launch as the financial and entrepreneurial-education foundation of the empowering work with the children living out in the teak plantations and bamboo thickets.

A few of the kids and another of the team members at Mae Sot

Obviously we are very excited and are chomping at the bit to be on site to work directly with them as we launch this new Charis Community and take what we learn here to feed back into the Doi Muser home to build it up even further.


*Directors at the Doi Muser Home

I Don't Have Any Original Thoughts

My friend keeps giving me rewrite assignments, and as I am a good little boy and he is a lit prof, I keep producing.

Here are the preceding posts:

[original] "Theology Is A Deliverance Ministry"

[rewrite 1] "Going Hammer-Time On That Last Post" a bullet point breakdown

[rewrite 2] "That Just Happened" a haiku

[rewrite 3] "Leviathan" a free-verse internal monologue in a sci-fi/fantasy allegorical genre

And now this is [rewrite 4]. A textual collage consisting of scraps of several different Biblical genres.

----

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was chaotic and useless

For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly but because of God who subjected it—in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now.

God created humankind in his own image

[God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it!"

[God said] "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” So the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman replied, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

[God said "They] must not be allowed to stretch out [their] hand and take also from the tree of life and eat."

Moses said to him... "I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you; I will take the initiative and you will obey my statutes and carefully observe my regulations.

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it.

Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us.

He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you. How else can someone enter a strong man’s house and steal his property, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can thoroughly plunder the house.

 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,
     for all things in heaven and on earth were created by him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him.
     He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.
     He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.
     For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in the Son
     and through him to reconcile all things to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross—through him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

He has destroyed what was against us, a certificate of indebtedness expressed in decrees opposed to us. He has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

In spite of what you think, these men are not drunk, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. But this is what was spoken about through the prophet Joel

For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit. For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace.

For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect

The only thing that matters is a new creation!

Going Hammer-Time On That Last Post

One of my friends requested that I rewrite "Theology Is A Deliverance Ministry" twice so that he can be sure of what I am saying. He is a lit professor so I will obey. I will rewrite in different formats and possibly even genres if only to work my skills.

In this first rewrite I will break it down:

God did not complete the creation.

The creation is yet to a significant degree subject to chaos and futility (formless and void).

God intends that creation be completed.

God created humans to complete the creation.

God truly loves the humans.

God put his life into humans so that they would be able to complete the creation.

Humans disobeyed God.

God forgives the humans for their disobedience.

The humans' disobedience broke them from the life of God.

 Without this life the humans are unable to complete the creation.

God intends that creation be completed.

The world exists as concrete time and space.

The forgiveness of God must come concretely into time and space to take effect in this world.

Jesus is the concrete expression of God's forgiveness in time and space.

As God takes on humanity in Jesus humanity is taken into God.

In the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus God effects his forgiveness on humanity.

The proof of this forgiveness is the return of the life of God into the humans.

Redemption is the action of this forgiveness taking full root in humanity.

Though the forgiveness has been made concrete the redemption is yet to be fulfilled in space and time.

Humans are complex entities.

The overtaking of this complexity by redemption involves the totality of this complexity.

As the redemption overtakes us we progressively become more aware and active in our participation in the reason for which we were created.

Our thoughts and beliefs are part of this complexity.

When our thoughts and beliefs are inconsistent with reality they require energy to maintain.

The greater our thoughts and beliefs diverge from reality the more energy they take to maintain.

Theology and evangelism are means by which our thoughts and beliefs come more into line with reality.

Theology and evangelism deliver us from ideas and beliefs that take up energy to maintain.

As these tools of redemption have their effect our energies are released to be focused on the completion of creation once again in obedience to God by the life of God in us.

We proclaim the good news because Jesus tells us to proclaim the good news.

We proclaim the good news because doing so moves redemption forward in the concrete time and space of this world.

We proclaim the good news so that the whole of humanity that has been taken up into God by the incarnation may become fully self aware as the body of Christ.

We proclaim the good news because the workers are few and the harvest is great, as great as the whole of creation.

Stop, hammer-time.

Theology Is A Deliverance Ministry

Being Christian does not get you into heaven. That is not the point of Christianity. At least it wasn't until Christianity lost it's way and needed a punishment/reward system to compensate for it's waning focus on the centrality of Jesus' work of effecting the forgiveness of God in the concrete history of the world that reinstated humanity as the very presence of God by the indwelling of the Spirit of God and the participating instruments of God's plan to bring the creation to completion (see here) (also, the length of this sentence is a tribute to my partial German heritage).

The work of Jesus is universal in scope for all things are in him.

Yet this complete salvation is incomplete. This universality of salvation is in principle. Just as the forgiveness of God has been an in principle reality from the first instance of disobedience. Though God's forgiveness has always been there it still needed to have its concrete establishment in the actual history of the world for it to take effect in the world. In the same way, the universality of this forgiveness and redemption must work out into the actual dirt and blood of history. Though in the incarnation all of humanity has been drawn into the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus and been opened to the life of the Spirit this reality has yet to actually overcome the futility and chaos that pervade the concrete reality of history.

This points to the purpose of theology and evangelism.

Evangelism is the wider end of theology. Where theology deals with the fine grains, evangelism interacts on the level of large chunks but they are on the same continuum. They are both addressing the actual structure of reality.

If redemption is universal then why theologize or evangelize? If what we think and believe has nothing to do with our ultimate destiny then why concern ourselves with it? If "God Gets Everyone" then what is the point of working hard?

First, because Jesus tells us to proclaim the good news.

Second, because our ultimate destiny was never the issue. The issue has always been the fulfillment of creation, so the objection is really baseless in that it assumes a falsity.

Third, we proclaim the Gospel, we work hard to accurately grasp reality because our purpose is active participation in this plan of God for creation.

If our beliefs are inconsistent or are at odds with reality then we suffer cognitive dissonance. We must exert a tremendous amount of creative mental energy to hold together ideas and beliefs that do not fit.

Now, imagine how much God given creative energy would be freed up if we were delivered from false ideas. Energy that could then be directed toward our actual purpose in this world: our active participation in bringing the universal redemption enacted in principle in Jesus into the concrete blood and dirt of history.

Theology is a deliverance ministry. It releases the the children of God from the demonically onerous futility of screwy ideas.

Evangelism is the process by which the universal body of Christ becomes self-aware.

Shameless Foundations: Part 4-God's Position

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

So God must be pretty pissed off at us for screwing up right? If we listen to much of the tradition that is what we would gather. This tradition does not act out of mean intent. Rather out of a desire to build the glory of God. However, the tradition has taken as its model of glory an understanding that has arisen out of the chaos that we have become subjected to.

Inadvertently, and with the best of intentions, the tradition has portrayed the glory of God as a petulant seven-year-old: "I made this and it is mine, now you messed it up, so I am going to play mean now." As if God is so insecure that he would have a tantrum. As if the Creator of all worries about his rights.

God doesn't need our defense of his glory to feel good about himself.

Remember in Part 1 I mentioned the dangers of turning God into a set of principles and deriving an ideology from those principles? This is a case in point.

The traditional notion of God's glory and what it means to us comes out of a set of supposedly ultimate principles that are supposed to describe the concept of God. First, I see no good reason why God should either have to or even want to conform himself to a set of principles that we have set up as conditions for us to conceptualize him as God. Second, God can do what God wants to do. The Creator of all has no obligation to behave in ways that we set out for him.

So our only really legitimate course of action is to look at what God does to figure out the the way God behaves.

When we look at this we do not see a petulant child. We do not see a God who says, "You messed this up, screw you all."

When we disobeyed and ate from the tree that God had commanded us not to he didn't slam down in a bolt of lightening and beat the crap out of us. He talked to us. He took us seriously enough to ask us what was up (as if he didn't know) almost as though he actually did intend to work through and with us to get his plan accomplished.

He comes into the garden and asks, "Hey, where are you guys?" We were hiding and said so and said that we were hiding because we were ashamed that we were naked. We had not been ashamed before. God knows this and asks "Who told you that you were naked?" And goes on to observe, "Oh, you must have eaten from that tree, why would you do that?" Our response its to start passing the buck of blame. Our primordial understanding of the character of God lacked the revelation of God's care for and committed interest in our well being. I have always wondered, in light of the span of the later story what would have happened if we would have, instead of passing the blame, said, "I screwed up. I disobeyed you. I did what you told me not to do. I should not have done that."* However this is not what happened. We persisted in our resistance.

Now the unfortunate results of our disobedience are not at all out of proportion to that disobedience. God doesn't destroy us. God doesn't beat the ever-loving crap out of us. God didn't impale us and stick red hot pokers in our eyes. God had designed and commissioned us to carry out his plan of bringing this world to completion. To go out and subdue the chaotic and futile earth. We rejected the connection that would have enabled us to carry out that plan. God merely released us into the world to experience for ourselves the chaotic futility that he had designed us to overcome.

He releases us but he does not reject us. Rather than berating us for our stupid insistence on the evils of nakedness he gives us clothes. And he lets us die rather than live forever in our subjection to futility.

We find a similar sort of story with Cain and Abel. And then we go out and multiply and fail to subdue the the chaotic futility. Rather, we wholeheartedly contribute to it. God had made us to complete this world because he wanted it completed and he wanted to do it through us and we were tearing it apart. In frustration and regret God decides to start over. Take it back to before the garden and then decide whether to try again.

But no. He finds a way to keep this plan on track. There is at least one person who is willing to obey him. God says, "I can work with that. We can try to reset to the garden with someone who is willing to obey."

So, Noah and the Flood.

After the reset,  God reminds us that we created us for and recommissions us, but it is different this time, "Be fruitful and multiply; increase abundantly on the earth and multiply on it." There is no subduing. The breath is gone from us. We have not the power to carry out our full purpose. God is just hoping for obedience at this point, but with his finished earth final goal still fully in view he decides that if it gets this bad again he will figure out another way to get his plan done than flooding out the world.

What can we say about God?  He is committed to overcome adversity in order to get his plan accomplished. This plan is for the completion of the world. He created us as central to getting that plan done. He is committed to us and getting us back on track with the ultimate plan. Our place in that plan involves a radically tight bond between us and God. Our disobedience to God endangers that bond.

This is the conclusion of this series. In the next one we will look at how God interacts with us to finally accomplish his grand strategy and get the completed world filled with humans, fully alive and in radical union with him: his very presence in this world.

*This interaction points right back to Part 2. Nudity is not the point. God himself makes the conclusion: "Who told you were naked....you must have eaten from the tree, you have clearly come to your own conclusions as to what is good and what is evil and are obeying that in opposition to obeying me." (Obviously this is an extension of the text, but it is fully warranted and right as well.)  We had set up our own system of morality and were obeying that rather than God. We can obey a system of morality or we can obey God. Not both. This is important. Notice that we were naked before we gained the knowledge of good and evil. It was only when we gained that knowledge that we decided that nakedness was bad. Before we gained that knowledge all we had was "Yes, Father." The very notion of good and evil was meaningless. When the totality of our assessment of action is limited to "Yes, Father" the categories of good and evil have no content. In obeying a system of morality, a law, we are withholding obedience to God and giving it to another.

Shameless Foundations: Part 3-Things Go Wrong

Part 1
Part 2

So God chose to make this world and put us in this world. God has largely ordered the cosmos out of his primordial lump of chaotic stuff but a significant degree of disorder remains. Into this he decides to carve out a a bit that looks remarkably finished. Into this corner of the world God then sticks creatures that are made out of the stuff of this world and makes them alive by putting his own life into them, making these creatures become his own very presence in this world, not above this world but in this world. He then makes clear why he made these creatures with a great commission: "Go out from this corner, become numerous, and bring this world to completion."

And then we ate a bit of fruit, started blaming each other, and lost the ability to do what we were designed to do. Instead of us going out and bringing the chaotic futility in the world into useful structure, we went out and became subjected to that very futility.

Now, even though we had the breath of God in us that gave us the sort of life force that would enable us to carry out our commission we did not have all that was needed. However much of himself God put in us was enough for us to do our job but we still needed instruction on how to get that job done. We can see our lack of knowledge in that God gave us a command: "do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if you do you will die." This is something important that he seems confident that we would not know otherwise. I don't think that this sort of lack of pragmatic knowledge about what may be dangerous in the environment is all that is going on. It would seem that God's direction to us to "finish the earth" would indicate that there is a completed state that God is expecting. Furthermore, it appears that he has some manner of strategy whereby to achieve it that he hasn't built into us, neither into the earth stuff he made us out of nor into the bit of himself that he put into us. So to be successful at the purpose for which we were designed and put on this earth we would need to obey God.

Okay, wait. Where did this obey stuff come from? Remember that this story does not necessarily intend to be a historical account of some dude named Adam and his hot broad Eve and whether or not they had bellybuttons. The primary point of this story is to get at what is going on in the world in terms of God, humans, the rest of the world, how problematic the world is, and that the world is at odds with how we expect it should be. So the tree might not actually be a magic apple tree that takes away our superpowers. It may just represent something else. Now remember that the tree is not the tree of evil, we do not consume evil by eating of that tree. It is the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil." Knowing both good and evil. Consuming this "fruit" is taking into ourselves the distinction of good from evil. We gain our own understanding of right from wrong. We have a term for this: systematized morality or ethics. Why is it that this would lead to death?

Well, remember the thing that I haven't mentioned yet? There was another tree in the garden. The tree of life. Remember what made us living beings? God breathing into us his Spirit. In the two trees the story places these two things in opposition: knowledge of good and evil (ethical regulations as such) and life (being the very presence of God in the world.) Now, God is not us, God made all of this, and God has a plan and strategy for how to finish what he has started. For us to know what this plan and strategy is he has to tell us, for us to execute God's plan and strategy we need to obey him. If we are obeying a set of ethical regulations are we obeying God? No, we are obeying a set of ethical regulations. If we are not obeying God and his strategy and plan for this world are we truly his presence in the world? No, in disobeying God we set ourselves over against his plans for the world and in doing so we lost that which made us alive (the tree of life, the breath of God), that which made us the very presence of God in this world. Having lost that life force by which we would have been able to subdue the useless chaos of the not yet complete creation, we became subjected to its futility.

Out in the chaos of the world, unable to break free of the stupid futility, useless chaos and weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

Part 4

Shameless Foundations: Part 2-Humanity

Part 1

So God is shaping the world out of the chaotic lump of cosmic stuff. Making progress, things are taking shape, then he gets to us.

God formed humanity out of the stuff of this earth. We are intrinsically part of this place. We do not belong somewhere else. This is literally our native ground.

Now, how the text talks about the establishment of humanity is important, and a little history is in order. In the cultures around which this story was written there were certain rituals for worship that are pertinent to the meaning of the Biblical story. When it was determined that a new temple was in order the first thing to be done was to plant a sacred grove, a garden if you will, that would demarcate the holy precinct. Then the priests would form the image of the god out of clay, or wood, or metal and would put it in the garden. Then the priests would perform a ceremony in which the breath or spirit of whatever god the image was of would come into the idol and the image would thereby become the very presence of that god in the earth. If you don't know the Biblical story take a look at it in the first two chapters of Genesis. Notice the similarities. The Genesis story was written to people familiar with these forms of worship. Notice how Genesis subverts the story and applies it to humanity. After establishing the the sacred grove, God himself forms the human as an image of himself, he places the human in the garden and puts his breath or spirit into the human and this breath is the thing that makes the human a living being. Let it hit hard: the human is the idol that God himself formed of himself and then put his own Spirit into to make the human the very presence of himself in the world.

By God's decision we are made of the stuff of this world, this is our place, and God has designed us to be his very presence in this world and in the beginning that is what we were. That is what we were intended to be. God also had a purpose for us. He made us for a job, a function, a task and not merely to simply be in some blissed out garden of Eden. First we were to tend the garden, then God gave us our orders. God formed us here and made us his very presence in this world to "go forth and multiply and subdue the earth."

Okay, remember that the garden was a special niche that God had carved out of the larger world which he was making, that is, wresting from chaos and futility. God could very well have fully ordered the whole thing completely but the way he did it is how he in fact decided to do it. In this context God forms us as his image, puts us that carved out garden, makes us into his very presence in the world and then commands us to complete the last bits of making this world. In us, God put himself into this world to finish making it but in such a way that we, this world's native inhabitants, get the huge dignity and honor and responsibility of fully participating in this act of creation.

What I have said here differs somewhat from most standard understandings on many points of this story. One big one is the "image of God." In most models the "image of God" is taken in terms of a reflection in a mirror or a painting. Such understandings work to find links between humans and God in terms of attributes (in the same way a picture is similar to the model that posed for it.) They derive principles of the divine nature from looking at the seemingly higher aspects of humanity: we are creative, God is creative therefore creativity is part of what it is to be the image of God the same with choice making, rationality, etc. What we end up with is a collection of observed human attributes that we project on or link to the divine nature (at least to the degree that we claim to know and understand it as such.) All this "image of God" does is ratify the human as defined by the human as next to the divine in the human's own eyes. What I am proposing is not some formal similarity but an actual presence. This actual presence constitutes the power by which we may accomplish the task for which we were designed--which brings me to the other difference I want to point out. In most models, humans are passive creatures put here kinda to just hang out and be mellow with God and stuff. What I am saying is that humanity is instrumental. God created us to a specific function within this creation. A function that if we don't do doesn't get done.

You are designed by God to be his very presence in this world, filled with his breath, to bring the perfection of this world to completion.

Part 3 
Part 4

Shameless Foundations: Part 1-The Beginning

I was planning on holding off starting this series until I had finished the "Running From A Shameful Gospel" series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  I had my strategy planned out to get the list of criticisms all out before I started the constructive work that I am starting here. The problem is that it is really difficult for me to critically analyze something that I have left behind. At some point I will go back and finish that series. But, after I published my last post I realized that I had better get some constructive "This is what I believe and these are the foundations, see I am not quite the sort of dangerous raving heretic you are starting to think I am" sort of material up here in an attempt to not completely alienate conscientious Christians.

This is what is going on in the world.

God chose to make this world in the way that he decided to make this world. He made this world rather than some other world, which he could very well have done. In fact, he my very well have done so but that is not particularly relevant to us because this, in fact, is the world that he put us in. He may very well have put creatures very like us in other worlds but neither is that relevant because, again, we are, in fact, here. This is important to remember this lest we decide to turn God into a set of principles and derive an ideology from our interpretation of those principles. This world derives from the contingency of God's decision making and not from some set of supposedly absolute principles. God can do whatever God wants to do for whatever reasons God wants to do it. Who are we to tell him otherwise?

So, God decided to make this world. He then got down to it however he got down to it. Whether he did it fast or slow or a little here a little there it doesn't really matter. I have no intention of embroiling myself in the ideologically prejudiced (on both sides) street fights (picturing "Anchor Man") as to how the universe came into being. At a deep epistemological level we can't really prove anything and even if someone happened to "get the right answer" there is no way we could be sure that it was in fact right. Human knowledge is limited not only in the amount of stuff we can know but in the surety we can actually have of the accuracy of that knowledge. So stand back and let me work what I got.

The point of the creation story(s) in scripture is not to give a modern textbook blow-by-blow of what actually happened. The people who wrote them and read them didn't care about that. The writers cared about God's relationship to this world and mankind's place in it. Now, telling a story talking about that in terms of the original formation of everything seems to me like a pretty crunchy thing to do. They wrote it, we didn't, who are we to complain. So what do they say?

God's creative movement in this world constitutes pushing back, even subverting the "formless and void." Actually a better modern translation of this would be "useless and chaotic." Now these adjectives describe the initial state of the cosmic "all of this." The picture is like God started by just kinda throwing a lump of stuff out there and it is a big mess which he then begins to form. Right off there is the clear impression the the Spirit or Breath has a very important function in policing the useless chaos (the "deep" was a particularly potent image of the power of that useless chaos the power of meaningless futility.) So God progressively orders the world bit by bit and then humans happen....

Part 2 
Part 3 
Part 4