Intimacy with God

For Christians the key to a deep relationship with God is found through the brotherhood we share with Jesus. Adherents of many religions and sadly, even many Christians, never move beyond an infatuation stage in their relationship with God. Most who become enamored with God do so because of God's majesty, transcendence, holiness; basically many people adopt a religion because of God's otherness. There is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging and worshipping the creator of the universe. In fact, such is to be encouraged! But for Christians the beauty of the trinity - one God represented in the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is what demonstrates the accessibility of God. More so, the Biblical allusions to God present in the human form of Jesus of Nazareth shows that God actually pursues a relationship with creation, that this majestic holy God actually loves the beings God created. With a miopic view of a transcendent God such an image would seem absurd. But if God gave up heaven to come to Earth to live as a man there must be a reason beyond a bored-God hypothesis. It would appear that God desired a relationship with creation that could not be attained with a Heaven bound God and Earth bound humans.

There is little wonder why there are so many marital analogies comparing the relationship between human and the Divine found in the Bible and in other mystical writings, including those of the early Christian era. The intimacy required is the same for humans learning to love, whether the object of love is God or another person. Richard Rohr (2013, Immortal Diamonds) observes,
"It is almost impossible to fall in love with majesty, power, or perfection. These make us both fearful and codependent, but seldom truly loving. On some level, love can happen only between equals, and vulnerability levels the playing field. What Christians believe is that God somehow became our equal when he became the human "Jesus," a name that is, without doubt, the vulnerable name for God" (p. 171).

Such a concept is difficult for many Christians to hear. It sounds irreverent at best if not blasphemous! But the beauty and mystery of the Trinity is found in the distinctiveness yet sameness of each person - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In love God lowered God's self to take on human flesh and human nature (see Philippians 2). Through that act of Godly humility we have access to God in a new way - as a peer, as a sibling, or literally as "one of us." Many days the accessibility of God through the brotherhood of Jesus keeps the gnawing doubts at bay. 

Encounter with Jesus

The jaunt to Samford U with a group of UGA students to see Shane Claiborne was a profound experience. Much of what Shane said can be found in his books & videos. However hearing him weave the stories together on stage while sitting in a chapel filled with excited students provided a spirit-filled milieu to hear the stories anew.

I've copied some of the most inspiring or disturbing thoughts and quotes below. Though these emerge from his experiences, they were all inspired by Shane's life-changing reading of scripture and encounter with Jesus. In his word's meeting Jesus didn't make his screwed up life perfect and whole. Encountering Jesus messed his normal, Christian life up; "I'm still recovering from my conversion experience".

Here are some of the nuggets that i'm struggling through:

Faith is a way of living, not just a way of believing
Each American consumes the equivalent of 500 Ethiopeans per year
Jesus took what was thought to be unclean (dirt and spit) and provided healing (wiped them in someone's blind eyes)! He radically transformed perspectives and worldviews
Mother Theresa said that in the poor and lame, in the least of these, "we see Jesus in his most distressing disguises"
"The best things to do with the best things in life is to give them away"
Ask yourself, "what if Jesus meant the things that he said?" So much of what he said collides with the way we live, with our USAmerican approach to life. "We need a new imagination of the way to live in the world" to not conform, but to be transformed. Most imprisonments (1 in 8 African Americans) are related to economics - that's a justice issue that we have not sufficiently addressed
Christians are not normal, are not of the status quo, they "seek to bring about the world that God dreams of"
Jesus sends us into the world as "radical nonconformists representing God's heart"
Jesus loves evil-doers so much that he died for them
There are a lot of things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for"
The question is not what job are you going to have "when you grow up" but "what kind of ____ are you going to be" - we are called to allow Jesus to transform what we are called and created to be/do into his likeness

I struggle through some of these issues I'll try to blog about them.