The Super-Personal God

When I was about eleven years old we made our first trip as a family out to Delaware. It would be my first time going to the ocean and has now become a family tradition of ours which we continue to do even today. When it came to vacations, we had a tradition in our family, in which my mom would let my sister and I get a few magazines or books at the Kroger grocery store to keep us busy on long trips. I remember vividly what I chose that year. I got a bunch of books on sharks and shark attacks. The trip was twelve hours long and I read each book, cover to cover. 

When we did arrive, I fell in love with the ocean; each day of the vacation you would find me body boarding or swimming. On one of our last days, I became more courageous and swam out further into the ocean than I ever had. I was just wading in the water, floating around, and enjoying one of my last days of vacation. I was way out; in fact, I was probably a good thirty yards away from the nearest swimmer. But then I noticed something odd. As I looked down the entire beach front, everyone was coming out of the water. I wondered what was going on? That had never happened before?! Just then, I saw and heard the lifeguard shout through his speaker phone, “Everyone out of the water! Everyone out of the water! Sharks! Sharks!” I had never heard more frightening words. I turned around and sure enough, swimming out near a tanker were about a dozen fins sticking up out of the water. 

Immediately, I swam toward the shore as fast as I could. There was only one problem though, all I could think about was all of those shark attack stories I had read. In particular, I remembered that sharks most often attack in shallow waters when their prey believe that they're safe. I swam like never before; I kept pumping my arms, kicking my legs, and finally, without a scratch on me, I crawled up onto shore. Just then, standing above me was the life guard and into his speakerphone he yelled, “False alarm. Just dolphins.” After that, I don’t think I swam in the ocean anymore before we left to go home!

Sometimes, things aren't what they seem. This is the case when it comes to how we think about God. We can have the knack for making Him in our image. In the early church they had to wrestle with this as well, and it came out when early church leaders had to wrestle with the theological implications of the Trinity. You think you know God in one way and he turns around and changes things a bit. This was especially the case with first century Jews who had become Christians. They grew up on the words, “The Lord is One.” And that was and is true; but it’s not the whole truth. In the first century, the doctrine of the Trinity threw everybody for a loop, and to this day, it can do the same.   

So why is the doctrine of the Trinity so important? Why do we even wrestle with this ultimately mysterious issue? Why not just leave it to the theologians to argue over? The Trinity is so very important because it is the starting point with our view of God.  When one doesn't come to have at least a rudimentary grasp of the Trinity, one's view of God is, at best, shallow or worse, profane. But it is also a truth that the doctrine of the Trinity is very difficult to get your mind around. It's nearly impossible to put in words. 

In the early church, the church had to come to grips with what they believed and so, they wrote out different creeds to tell themselves and others what they believed, and what they did not believe. Believe it or not, there is one such creed that specifically discusses the importance of the Trinity; it is called the Athanasian Creed. One part of it states: 

As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensibles, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty; And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.

As you can see, words can fail us. Clarity is difficult to find when discussing a mystery. We must remember that this doctrine is something our little minds can never fully understand. We must come to the point that we know that God is limitless and we are finite. Yet we have a problem with this; as creatures of the 21st century we want to know everything and often feel that we have the right to such knowledge. In our data-driven world, there is some much knowledge and we have a sense of entitlement that we should know all that there is to know. I like what Dorothy Sayers had to say on the topic of the Trinity. Listen carefully to what she said: 

Why do you complain that the proposition God is three in one is obscure and mystical and yet acquiesce meekly in the physicist's fundamental formula, ‘two P minus PQ equals IH over two Pi where I equals the square root of minus one’ when you know quite well that the square root of minus one is paradoxical in Pi is incalculable?

Did that make your head spin? There are many things within the Christian faith that fall under the realm of mystery; two, would be, the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ and God’s providence. The doctrine of the Trinity is no different. And this is the great problem that many believers face; if we don't understand it, we have a difficult time believing it.

So how can we explain this difficult belief of ours? How do we explain to someone that we believe in one God but three “persons?” We have all heard different analogies of explaining the Trinity. When my boys were young we bought them a children’s book that attempted to explain the Trinity as an apple. The book said it something like this:

The Father is the skin of the apple. He is our protector. 
The Son is the flesh of the apple. He is the one who makes us strong. 
The Holy Spirit is the seed or core. He helps us to grow. 

We must, however, remember that all analogies fail when it comes to the Trinity. In fact, all analogies lean toward some form of heresy. Why? Because God can not be analogous. If you could compare God to an apple, what would that say about him? It is impossible to compare God to anything. Actually, the only thing we can kind of compare him to is us. We are the only thing he made in his image. And yet even we are a faint comparison to Him. Even that analogy breaks down at some point. Analogies can be helpful, but we must always keep in the back of our mind that they are flawed.

Perhaps just plain words are better descriptors. I like how C.S. Lewis pictured the Trinity. He saw that God, who is triune in nature, as someone who is “super-personal.” We can't even imagine such a person. I like that phrase Lewis uses, super-personal; God is personal to an extreme. Actually, he is more than a person. Meditate on that for awhile. I believe there can be a comfort and an excitement that one can find in such an understanding. One day we will all stand face-to-face to this ultimately personal Person. Better yet, we can know this super-personal Person even today.

The Dragons We Are

C.S. Lewis illustrates a person "losing themselves" in an inventive manner in one of his early books. Some of you know it because it comes from his classic series The Chronicles of Narnia. In the third book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is the story of a boy named Eustace. Early on we meet Eustace, but there is something different about him compared to the other children—he’s very selfish, often complaining and overall bothersome to the others. There’s something missing for him and you see that piece of him clearly in comparison to the other children.  Simply put, Eustace is a broken soul.

Through a selfish adventure in which he goes off by himself, he learns a difficult lesson. One evening he wanders off and he comes upon a dragon's lair. In the cave, he finds a treasure guarded by a dragon. As he sits there staring at this treasure, he begins to devise ways in which he can steal these riches for his own. He accomplishes his task, and as he slips on a stolen bracelet, he slips off to sleep. As he awakes, he discovers a surprise:

He was surprised at the size of his tears. They also seemed strangely hot; steam it went up from them. But just as he reached the edge of the pool two things happened. First of all, it came over him like a thunderclap that he had been running on all fours—and why on earth had he been doing that? And secondly, as he bent towards the water, he thought for a second that yet another dragon was staring up at him out of the pool. But in an instant he realized the truth. The dragon face in the pool was his own reflection.

Amazingly, because of his wayward actions, he had become a dragon and as he lived in this new skin, he began to detest this strange life. Overtime, he began to realize some things about himself. He began to discover how harsh and cruel he was and had become. He was not a friend to his friends and as he walked around in these dragon scales, he wanted a change. Slowly but surely, he began to realize that he acted like a beastly dragon when he once was human. The curse he was, he had now become.

He wanted to be friends. He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things. He realized that he was a monster cut off from the whole human race. An appalling loneliness came over him. He began to see the others had not really been friends that all. He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.

But this is not the end of the story. Eustace has a remarkable transformation in which parallels what needs to happen to each of us. In his frustration, he longs to be himself again, a newer self, more friendly and caring of others. The central character in the Chronicles of Narnia is Aslan the Lion. He is the figure of Jesus in the the Narnia books. In his great tale The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis describes the first time the children hear about this Aslan, the Great Lion, who is the Christ figure in the book. The children are at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who have had dealings with Aslan.They tell the children about this Aslan, the Lion:

"Is---is he a man? Asked Lucy.

"Aslan, a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor beyond the sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion-the lion—the great Lion."

Ooh!" said Susan. "I'd rather thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

In this story of Eustace, this great lion Alsan intervenes and goes to the young boy who has been transformed into a dragon. Almost as if playing a trick on him, Aslan tells Eustace to scratch off his skin, perhaps then he can become a boy again. Eustace begins to tear away at his scales and even though it feels good like itching a scratch, as the skin comes off, it quickly reappears. He does this three different times and Eustace soon realizes that his skin is impossible for him to remove. In frustration this boy-dragon demands of Aslan in how many times he must attempt to tear this skin away and become the boy he once was.

However, Eustace soon realizes that it is only Aslan who has the ability to change him. The only way in which he can ever be himself is to let Aslan remove the scales. It is a perfect picture of what we must all undergo to overcome our own selfish and sinful bent. Only Jesus can do that work for us.

The very first tear he made it was so deep that I thought it had gone right in to my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh, but it is such fun to see it coming away. He peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been… and then I saw why, I’d turned into a boy again.

This deep tear in the heart is what we all need to happen and only Jesus can wrench out from our hearts that selfish impulse which lies there. To genuinely be unselfish is innately unnatural for all of us, and it is only Jesus, who just as with Eustace, can turn us from dragon to child. As St. Augustine pointed out: Man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. This is the life of the dragon. We must all go through such a transformation and if we don’t we will continue living as dragons—truly alone and with only thoughts for ourselves and living in genuine unhappiness. No different than what Jesus demands, we must all become like children again:

For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. (Matthew 18:2-5, The Message)

The Necessity to Grow

I know of someone who recently has walked away from their faith. This was a person who some years back was serving and living a life that was exemplary when it came to being a Christian. However, over the last couple of years, I began to see that this life began to wane and he did not take his relationship with God very seriously over these last years. Slowly over time, it began to show, and not only with the obvious outward signs. Sadly, with this and since that time, he has made many poor decisions which has not only impacted him negatively, but his family as well. It's been a little bit like watching a train wreck.

With that, I have been thinking about how dangerous it can be not to grow as a Christian, which essentially means to not have Jesus at the center of your life on a daily basis. And yet, this happens all the time. Sadly, in general, the church today places such emphasis on evangelism, "getting people saved and into heaven," but too often focus too little on discipleship—learning how to live a life with Jesus. The Barna Group has some staggering statistics, confirming the fact that the church is good at “making converts, but not disciples:”

• When Christian adults were asked to identify their most important goal for their life, not a single person said it was to be a committed follower of Jesus Christ, or to make disciples of Christ. 
• Less than one out of every five born again adults had any specific and measurable goals related to their personal spiritual development. 
• Less than 1% of all believers perceived a connection between their efforts to worship God and their development as a disciple of Jesus.
• The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen believers is "God helps those who help themselves"—which is not actually in the Bible, and actually conflicts with the basic message of Scripture.

But as each of us knows--living for Jesus every day--this is really where life begins, not when you say the sinner’s prayer. Life is always continuing and we need to move with it. Often in Christian circles, over time, being reflective and deliberate about our relationship with God is put to the side. For whatever reason, people tend to stagnate rather than thrive after making a commitment of faith. The questions don’t get asked. Masks begin to be worn. We play the part, but don’t really know the role we should be playing as it relates to being a Christian.

Living like a Christian is easy, being in relationship with God is a whole different matter. This is what Jesus was talking about when you build something on sand. I learned quickly in my own life, that if you have any amount of biblical knowledge, watch out. You eventually will become the expert, the guru. People will perceive that you have it all together, everything is in place, and you and God must be best buds. But all of this can be perilous, because it allows or forces ourselves to not be who really are. In the end, we paint ourselves into a corner to which there is no escape. Because we have played the role of the well-behaved churchgoer, we don't know how to play any other. Sadly, I know this from first-hand experience from years past.
 
But knowledge is never the standard for relationship and too often in the church, this is what we emphasize. It’s easy to know a lot about someone; it’s a whole new thing to know someone. This makes sense—it’s much more easy and comfortable to just know about someone, simply knowing the facts (e.g., "she works at a hospital, likes to eat salads at lunch, has three kids, and drives a Black Toyota Sienna."). There’s distance and safety and very little mess. Knowing just the facts about someone does not mean you know them. Lots of us know a lot about a whole bunch of people, but it goes about as far as that. It's the idea of the a mile wide, but an inch deep. For some, it can be a rarity that we have genuinely deep and strong friendships. We keep people at bay, at a safe distance and we don’t go too deep.
 
But we need to move beyond just knowledge—we need to know. John Wesley once wrote, “Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.” In that statement, Wesley was saying that it was disgraceful if he hadn’t grown beyond where he once stood in terms of knowing God. We need to keep moving on as well, being restless and asking for more. This should be the end goal. I think C.S. Lewis said it in the most direct way possible:

Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

Those are strong and difficult words, but they are so true. Yogi Berra said it in a similar way, but in a way only he could: If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else. As Christians, we need to continually change and grow and move beyond just knowing about God and genuinely encounter him. At the end of the day, we need to know where we are headed.

Marking Points That We Make

It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

-Ursula LeGuin

Personal change is important, because it is innate to being a follower of Jesus. Naturally, we are continually being renewed, growing and emerging and becoming more. With this, our journey of faith has marking points. Being a Christian is a progression. We have many examples of this in Christian literature, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan as the classic, and The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis in the last century. And yet, the walk of faith is never one in which the person “arrives”--that they have it all figured out. We will let the eastern religions keep that monopoly! The walk of faith is like an long road trip, going from one town to the next and every now and then stopping alongside the road perhaps to change the tire that has blown or getting off at the next exit to have some good coffee and a piece of pie at a diner just off the beaten path. Discovery, in the in end, is at the heart of the Christian faith.

Throughout the Bible, God is attempting to pound this idea that it's all about a relationship with him that matters the most. The Israelites of the Old Testament had such a hard time with this one, because they wanted so much to make it about religion—following a set of rules was so much easier than being in a relationship with their Creator. Very few characters we read about in the Old Testament got it right. Most, which we read about, insisted on obeying all the rules versus moving into a friendship with God. If we were to think about that list of who got it right, it is a relatively short one. A few would be: Abraham, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Josiah, annd Elijah. When we read their stories, we learn about the ramifications and possibilities of having a relationship with God.

In the New Testament, Jesus makes the same challenge. He says that the basis of everything is relationship, a relationship with him. Let’s listen to Jesus’ all-important words, “I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) The Message restates it even more directly: “Separated, you can't produce a thing.” Now that’s saying it like it is! Meditate on that one for a minute. Are we really going to believe such a statement? No one—not your Aunt Bev, not the nice guy down the street who shovels your sidewalk every winter, not even your own mom, the nicest lady in the world—can do anything good without Jesus. What he means in that statement, is simply this—everything has to be about him, otherwise it means nothing. As C.S. Lewis wrote so eloquently in Mere Christianity, in making such statements like this, Jesus was either an ego maniac, mentally ill or God Himself! Everything will come up short without Jesus. Every part of our lives must be subject to him: the inner strength of our marriage; the skills and talents we use on the job; our ability in the classroom or on the basketball court; how well we can think or feel; our financial security; our gifts of hospitality or giving; our ability to be a father or mother, son or daughter. Jesus is the center and how centered our lives are to his, will determine how well we do in everything. Everything about our lives starts with him. It’s not that we don’t have importance as well in this on-going relationship; but the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us. Let me say that one more time: the whole of our lives and how we live them starts with the One who made us.

This is the starting point and the ending point. Our life, all of it, is in relationship to the One who created us (Colossians 1:16). The closer we are to him, the better we are. I see this continually with my own life and in the lives of others. The better a relationship with God a person has, the more “effectiveness” they have in their own lives. Depression is easier to conquer; marriages re-connect sooner; a father and a teenage son begin to have fun again; sometimes, you can even hit the golf ball straight. Things begin to happen that you never expected to happen. Life begins to fall in place. Inevitably, if we want to have the life we want, if we want to be the person we are supposed to be, it will tie back to our connection with Jesus. In essence, only the person who has God at the center of his life can have the good life. Again, the closer you are to him, the better you will be.

To end, Muhammed Ali said it well: “The man who views the world at fifty the same way he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” The person who commits his life to God and his ways will go through many changes of not only mind, but heart and soul as well. Relationships will change. Interests will change. Thinking will change. Life, itself, will change. If we allow it, the whole of life will just be an on-going metamorphosis into something more, something different and better. In the process of the journey, we are inevitably changed. Literally, one year-five years-twenty years later, you’ll become an entirely different person, a better person, more sound and connected to something extraordinary.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

When I was about thirteen years old we made our first trip as a family out to Delaware. It would be my first time going to the ocean. When it came to vacations, we had a tradition in our family, in which, we could get a few magazines or books at Kroger right prior to going. I remember vividly what I chose. I got a bunch of books on sharks and shark attacks. The trip was long and I read each book, cover to cover. When we did arrive, I fell in love with the ocean; each day of the vacation you would find me swimming. On one of our last days, I became more courageous and swam out further into the ocean. I was just wading in the water, floating around, and enjoying one of my last days of vacation. I was way out; in fact, I was probably a good twenty yards away from the nearest swimmer. But I noticed something odd. As I looked down the entire beach front, everyone was coming out of the water. I thought, What's going on? Just then, I saw and heard the lifeguard shout through his speaker phone, “Everyone out of the water! Everyone out of the water! Sharks! Sharks!” I had never heard more frightening words. I turned around and sure enough, swimming out near a tanker further out were about a dozen fins. Immediately, I swam toward the shore as fast as I could. Only one problem though, all I could think about was all of those shark attack stories I had read as we drove out to Delaware. In particular, I remembered that sharks most often attack in shallow waters when their prey believe that they're safe. I kept pumping my arms; kicking my legs; and finally, without a scratch on me, I crawled up onto shore. Just then, standing above me was the life guard and into his speakerphone he yelled, “False alarm. Just dolphins.” After that, I don’t think I swam anymore before we left to go home.

Sometimes, things aren't what they seem. This is the case when it comes to the Trinity. You think you know God in one way and he turns around and changes things a bit. This was especially the case with first century Jews. They grew up on the words, “The Lord is One.” And that was and is true; but it’s not the whole truth. In the first century, the doctrine of the Trinity threw everybody for a loop, and to this day, it does the same. So why is the doctrine of the Trinity so important? Why do we even wrestle with this ultimately mysterious issue? Why not just leave it to the theologians to argue over? The Trinity is so very important because it is the starting point with our view of God. When one doesn't come to at least a rudimentary grasp of the Trinity, their view of God is, at best, shallow and worse, profane. But let's make no bones about it, the doctrine of the Trinity is very difficult to get your hands on or your mind around. It's nearly impossible to put in words. As you know in the early church, the church had to come to grips with what they believed and so, they wrote out different creeds to tell others what they believed, and did not believe. Believe it or not, there is one such creed concerning the Trinity; it is called the Athanasian Creed. One part of it states, “As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensibles, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty; And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.” As you can see, words fail us. Clarity is difficult to find.

We must remember that this doctrine is something our little minds can never fully understand. We must come to the point that we know that God is limitless and we are finite. Yet we have a problem with this; as creatures of the 21st century we want to know everything. In the world, there is some much knowledge that runs about and we have a sense of entitlement that we should know all that there is to know. I like what Dorothy Sayers had to say on the topic. Listen carefully, "Why do you complain that the proposition God is three in one is obscure and mystical and yet acquiesce meekly in the physicist's fundamental formula, ‘two P minus PQ equals IH over two Pi where I equals the square root of minus one’ when you know quite well that the square root of minus one is paradoxical in Pi is incalculable?" There are many things within the Christian faith that fall under the realm of mystery; two, would be, the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ and God’s providence. The doctrine of the Trinity is no different. And this is the great problem that many believers face; if we don't understand it, we won't believe it.

So how can we explain this difficult belief of ours? How do we explain to someone that we believe in one God but three “Persons?” We have all heard different analogies of explaining the Trinity. When our boys were young we bought them a childen’s book that attempted to explain the Trinity as an apple. The Father is the skin of the apple. He is our protector. The Son is the flesh of the apple. He is the one who makes us strong. The Holy Spirit is the seed or core. He helps us to grow. We must, however, remember that all analogies fail when it comes to the Trinity. In fact, all analogies lean toward some kind of heresy. Why? Because God can not be analogous. If you could compare God to an egg, what would that say about him? It is impossible to compare God to anything. Actually, the only thing we can compare him to is us. We are the only thing he made in his image. And yet even we are a faint comparison to the living God. Analogies can be helpful but we must always keep in the back of our mind that they are flawed.

Perhaps just plain words are better descriptors. I like how C.S. Lewis pictured the Trinity. He saw that God, who is triune in nature, as someone who is “super-personal.” We can't even imagine such a person; again, only we ourselves are somewhat of a similarity. I like that phrase he uses, super-personal; God is personal to an extreme. Without being schizophrenic, he is so personal that he can have fellowship with himself! Actually he is more than a person. Meditate on that for awhile. I believe there can be a comfort and an excitement that one can find in such an understanding. One day we will all stand face to face to this ultimately personal Person. More importantly, today we can have a relationship with that Person. That is a joyous and exciting thought!