Author: transcendenttouched

I have been teaching the Bible to children and adults for over twenty years. Most recently, including teaching Discipleship/Confirmation classes. I have also been involved in various church leadership roles for many of those years. Until recently, my writing endeavors have been confined mainly to poetry. I've written an anthology of my first 40 years of writing poetry in my book, Growing. I have also written an overview of the Bible called, God Reveals Himself.

Conflicts are Clues

The Impossible Dance – Table of Contents

The Impossible Dance – Chapter 1 – Mystery and Confusion

The purpose of this book is to not only show the unity of both Testaments and how they help make one cohesive story, but also a story into which the Church has tried, and we can try, to fit. Because the Bible is a complex collection of literature, using many literary styles and techniques and it can be difficult to understand some parts, particularly when one part seems to contradict another part. I have found a useful principal in studying the Bible which I call “Conflicts are Clues” which says that any apparent conflict or confusion in Scripture should be handled as clues to look further instead of thinking that the conflicts create contradictions which reduce the integrity of the Bible.

The Impossible Story

The Impossible Dance – Table of Contents

The Impossible Dance – Chapter 1 – Mystery and Confusion

A few thousand years ago, someone began writing a story, a different story than the others in circulation at the time. Those other stories were about gods who, except for being immortal, acted just like the humans with all their faults and shortcomings. And those stories headed nowhere. Nothing got better. But this new story was not about many gods but one God. This new story explained that even though things were originally good, there is a mess now, but there is a plan to make it better.

Intriguingly, although this story was begun by one human author, the story would continue to be written by many other human authors, different authors who spoke different languages and who lived at different times over the course of 1500 years. What held it all together was the divine author whose Spirit was breathed into each human author. What began as a set of writings by one human author, eventually became a book, a literary masterpiece with common themes, but also with complex literary devices, inter-textual references, poetry and songs, and different kinds of narratives about events before the writers lived, or about events witnessed by the different writers, or prophetic narratives about God’s judgments and His plans in either the immediate or far-off future.

This long, complex story told in these many texts revealed a God who has remained faithful despite our distracted and discontented ways. These texts were compiled into the book we now call the Bible, divided into sections we call the Old Testament and New Testament. Sadly, for many people, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible can seem disconnected. Some have even proposed that the God described in the Old Testament portion is different from the God in the New Testament. The apparent disconnection is partly due to the issue of the cultural barriers between us and the Bible, particularly, the Old Testament.

Unfortunately, there is a further disconnect we also need to address. Between us and the biblical writings is the long and messy history of the Church. The Church seems very divided on how to interpret those writings and how to live into them. It is downright confusing to sort out all the various interpretations and practices that seem to contradict one another.

Another area of tension for many is what is perceived to be a conflict between science and theology. In years past, however, the issue was not about conflict but about which discipline rules over or undergirds all the other disciplines. These ideas were expressed in ways such as “theology is the queen of all sciences,” “math is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the handmaid of all sciences.” Regardless of whether we seek truth through science and/or theology, God is the author of both Creation and the Bible, God speaks to us both through both books. Theology’s main goal is to understand spiritual reality and science’s main goal is to understand physical reality, but both fields can inform the other about the nature of God.

Understanding the impossible

The Impossible Dance – Table of Contents

The Impossible Dance – Chapter 1 – Mystery and Confusion

We hear different stories, but no one really knows. Not for sure. How it all began. How it will all end. It is just simply and merely impossible. When it comes down to it, we don’t even really understand today, nor ourselves, never mind the rest of the world.

But we still insist on one impossible thing. We want to make sense of it all … well, at least, make sense of what we need to do today … or maybe just the next moment. On top of that, in spite of the mystery of the past, present and future, many of us want to have hope that sometime in the next moment or next day or sometime in the future things will be better than right now. We want to make enough sense of now so that we can figure out what to do next and we want to have some sense of hope so that we are motivated to do that next thing.

Brooding, Moving, Dancing

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

[Bible references: Genesis 1; Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:19-21; Galatians 3:13-14; Ephesians 3:20; 1 Peter 5:10]

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … and the Spirit of God brooded^[1] over the face of the waters …

Like a bird sitting on eggs keeping them warm until the eggs would hatch and bring forth new birds, the Spirit hovered, brooded, over the earth ready to bring forth life of all sorts, but particularly creatures that would be like God, creatures that would reflect the character of God: transcendent, loving, wise, fruitful, etc. This is how the story begins, full of anticipation and hope for what must be a grand and wonderful future.

But even before the story begins, we may contemplate another mystery, the mystery of the one person God also being the three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The early church^[2] struggled with this concept and eventually, in the second century, a Christian apologist, Tertullian, coined the term “Trinity” to describe this 3-persons in 1-person concept.

However, that tidy little term can mask over the impossible to understand idea of God being one person and three persons at the same time. There is Greek word available to us that addresses the complexity of this three-in-oneness, “perichoresis” which comes from two Greek words which mean “interpenetration” or “mutual indwelling.” This is meant to describe the interpenetration or mutual indwelling of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“In that regard the term “perichoresis” (meaning “interpenetration,” “circumincession” or “mutual indwelling”) has been used theologically at least since the time of John of Damascus to refer to the way the three divine persons live in joyful, dynamic communion without merging, loss or distinction. It is said to be derived from the Greek term perchoreuo meaning “to dance around.” However, the evidence indicates that the term is derived from the different though similar looking perichoreo which refers to “interpenetration” but does not refer to dancing…. this does not mean that the concept itself is inappropriate, as evidenced by those who appreciate its use in that way.” ^[3]

While this term may be partly helpful in understanding this impossible to understand concept, there is another word that is very similar to perichoresis which means “to dance around,” which gives us a word picture of our living and complex God in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit not only interpenetrate but interact with one another, in a freewheeling but synchronized dance. This means that, as God’s image-bears, we can reflect the image of the loving, interpenetrating, interacting, and dancing God as we participate in His work of taking care of His Creation and of one another.^[4]

This dance which started before Creation, has been joined by God’s image-bearers since the beginning of humanity. It is now our turn. We just need to learn the moves and join the dance.

^[1] Biblehub “Genesis 1:2” Bible Hub biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/1-2.htm Most translations or this phase use the terms “hovering” or “moving,” but there is also a case for using the term, “brooding,” as in a bird sitting on a nest of eggs.

^[2] Van Ee, Joshua J. “The Church in the Old Testament” Westminster Seminary California 9 Nov 2017 www.wscal.edu/blog/the-church-in-the-old-testament The term “church” as used in this book will refer to what may more properly be called the “new testament church.” I wish to make that distinction because the term “church” may be properly applied to all of those who are “called out” to follow Yahweh.

^[3] Edgar, Brian. “The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality,” Chapter 9: Kingdom: Playing with God, The Dance of Life Cascade Books 2017 (e-book)

^[4] Miller, Darrow. “Perichoresis: Great Dance of God and Creation” Darrow Miller and Friends 16 July 2018 darrowmillerandfriends.com/2018/07/16/perichoresis-great-dance-god-creation/

Reflect

Our logic has limits when it comes to understanding the perichoresis of the Trinity, a one person, dancing community. How can we, as image bearers of God, reflect that one-person community?

Observe

Read Genesis 1. Think of the Spirit of God hovering, moving and brooding over the earth. In your imagination, think about a spiritual being “giving birth” to physical living things, what would you expect to happen?

Reprise with Variations

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

[Bible references: Genesis 1; 3:8; Matthew 9:14-15; Romans 8:19-22; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Revelation 21-22]

“The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse towards whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in his heart, and that in this way God might be glorified. ^[1]

God created the universe for his glory, and within that, humans were created to experience the true joy of living, to bear the fruit of His nature, to reflect His presence. We are designed to be image-bearers of God himself, stewards of the creation He inserted us into while reflecting the very character of God. The exercise of stewardship is seen in the process of “subduing” and “having dominion” over the earth (its creatures and it resources), and in being “fruitful” and filling the earth. God’s initial reaction to creating us was, “It was very good.” His intent was that we would fill and take care of the earth, all the while reflecting His character to each other and to His creation.

In the beginning, heaven and earth were joined at the Garden of Eden. It was a place where the Creator could have communion with his image-bearers and walk in the garden with them. The garden was the perfect place for the image-bearers to develop and begin working out the intended future of filling the earth and ruling over it as co-regents with God.

He gave us unimaginable delight and freedom, but that very freedom He gave us was joined to a responsibility, a responsibility that was wrongly used and caused immense far-reaching damage – damage we could not possibly undo – the whole universe is groaning, waiting for to be restored. Our pride-laden rebellion damaged the relationships between each other, between us and God, between us and the world and even between heaven and earth; but God had a plan from the beginning, a plan which is now underway, to ultimately restore what was lost and undo that damage^[2] and bring us to our intended destination – an earth filled with and ruled by image-bearers and where heaven and earth are rejoined so that the image-bearers can walk with God once again.

“Jesus’ own teaching during his brief public career simply reinforced the Jewish picture. He redefined a lot of ideas that were current at the time – notably, of course, kingdom of God itself, explained in many coded parables and symbolic actions that God’s sovereign, saving rule was now breaking in, even though it didn’t look like what his contemporaries had imagined and wanted.”^{^[3]}

Ultimately, we will be freed from the bondages of sin and death and all the relationships that are now damaged will be restored. In fact, in a timeline that we cannot fully grasp, God waited from the beginnings of mankind until 2000 years ago to defeat the power of sin and death and begin the process of restoring His kingdom on earth. Then He told us that someday, he will complete that process and he will return in the fullness of his glory to fully restore all things at that time. We just don’t know when that will be.

Our hope looks at the resurrection of Jesus as a harbinger of the resurrection that awaits all those of us who will be united with Him in our own transformed bodies in the new heavens and the new earth.

‘… what is the ultimate Christian hope? …what hope is there for change, rescue , transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present … if the Christian hope is for God’s new creation, for “new heavens and new earth,” and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then there is every reason to join the two questions together … “God’s kingdom” in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.” ^[4]

Furthermore, our hope doesn’t ask for us to simply wait for that time when the Kingdom of God is fully restored, but that we can be part of God’s plan to bring the Kingdom of God into our broken world.

^[1] Edwards, Jonathan, “Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two” (p. 62) SERMON II. THE CHURCH’S MARRIAGE TO HER SONS, AND TO HER GOD. Ed. John E. Smith, Yale University Press, 2009

^[2] Bible Project “Pursuing God, Heaven and Earth,” Bible Project www.pursuegod.org/biblical-themes-an-animated-explanation-of-heaven-earth

^[3] Wright, N.T. “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” (p. 18). Harper Collins 2008. Kindle Edition

^[4] Wright, N.T. “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” pp. 4-5 Harper Collins 2008. Kindle Edition

Reflect

Speaking strictly from what we know from science, we seem to be random life forms on a random planet in a random spot in the universe. In that perspective, having an anthropocentric view of the universe seems absurd. But knowing what the Creator of heaven and earth has revealed to us, the universe was designed to be inhabited … by us! How does that change your view of the universe?

Observe

Read Psalm 8; 111; Exodus 8:16-19. Some of us can look at the universe and see the “fingerprints of God.” Why do others of us not draw the same conclusion?

Appendix A – Tips on How to Study the Bible

The goal of interpretation is to understand the author’s intended meaning and that must be done in light of the language, time and culture in which a document was written. The difficulty is that our interpretation is affected by our experiences, culture, education, etc. Biblical interpretation is also impacted by understanding the document in its original context while trying to discern how to apply that understanding in a universal way. The Bible also is a complex document written in many genres: history, law, poetry, wisdom, parables, sermons, etc. and each genre must be taken into consideration.

The process of interpretation, hermeneutics (the process of interpreting the text and applying its meaning) begins with the process of exegesis (the process of figuring out the original meaning of the text).

The process of exegesis involves asking the right questions of the text and figuring:

Context –
1. historical context– time and culture of the author and audience, occasion of the text, geographical, topographical and political factors
1. literary – relation of each sentence to the preceding and succeeding sentences, units of thought (paragraphs of sections)
Content – meanings of words grammatical relationships
Use of tools such as: good translation, Bible dictionary, commentary

Some types of exegesis are:

historical – find what text meant back when it was written or when it happened),
canonical – looking at entire text of Bible as a whole document designed to be what a specific community shapes its life by
symbolic/allegorical – figuring out the symbolism of each story, character, and event,
literary – considering the context in light of the literary form used and examining word choices, editing work, main themes or narratives, etc.
rational – using logic and deductive techniques

Hermeneutics – Ask questions about Bible’s meaning in reference to here and now: A text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or readers but when our current particulars match the original particulars, the principles (morals) could apply to us now.

One general problem is historical distance: the original text was written with little historical distance and was therefore a high context situation where things could be left unstated because they were assumed. We are reading the Bible in a low context situation where we have to try to discover what were those high context assumptions that were left out of the text.
Techniques include reading the entire document out loud in order to hear the text, outlining the text, dividing it into sections, make notes about people being referred to, attitudes, problems being discussed
Our questions or problems about the text may not be the questions the original hearers were asking.
We need to be aware of the types of literature being used: parables, hyperbole, poetry, questions, irony, etc. so that we can interpret them appropriately

Problems of historical context

determining the situation being written about
determining if the problems/questions we see are the problems/questions that would have been asked in those situations
determining when a problem being addressed should be seen as just a historic particularity/culture or transcends the particular issue/culture and can be applied to more general situations.

Type of Bible translations.

Formal – adheres to structure of original language (NASB, HCSB, RSV, NRSV, ESV). In extreme, a literal translation (KJV, NKJV)
Functional – translates idioms in context of receptor language (NIV, NAB, GNB, NLT).
Free/paraphrase – translates ideas more than words or phrases (NEB, LB)

Types of considerations:

External evidence – quality and age of the manuscripts;
Internal evidence – copyists and authors;
Human variables – original language of manuscript, receptor language (language) being translated to.
Problem areas include translating weights, measures and money, euphemisms, wordplays, grammatical structures such as Greek use of genitive construction (my book vs. book of me, God’s grace vs grace of God), use of masculine language where women are included.
For these considerations it can be useful to have one of each type of translation.

Narratives

Narratives are stories about particular historic events with three basic parts: characters, plot and plot resolution. The narratives in the Bible are parts of the larger metanarrative which is the story of God and his working in the world and of his universal plan for creation and for his people. Old Testament Narratives are not meant to be allegories or teach moral lessons directly (unless they illustrate what is explicitly taught elsewhere). Narratives are descriptions of events and are not meant to establish norms unless there is explicit teachings elsewhere.

There are three categories of doctrinal statements derived from Scripture: Christian theology, Christian ethics and Christian experience/practices. Some of these statements are explicit (and are considered to be primary) and some are derived (are considered to be secondary).

——————————————————————

My own comments: There is sometimes a question about what translation will be best; there is no “best” translation. In fact, it might be best to have one of each kind of translation: formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence and paraphrase. A Bible dictionary and a concordance are useful, and all of these are available online as well as in hard copy. The depth of your study will depend on your education, your effort and your available time and resources. The average person will have limited time and education to use all the information presented above. But none of these study methods are meant to be a substitute for the simple living of the gospel, a way of life that is available to all of us.

Interlude

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Interlude

As I was working one warm summer night at a convenience store with the door open, it was not unexpected to see a moth fly in through the door. Normally, moths are attracted to light sources, but this time the moth was attracted to the white top of a garbage container. The moth was distracted by the light reflected off the garbage container. I think that describes a lot of human behavior; we get distracted by the pretty garbage.

In the meantime, there is a story that began long ago when God brought into being creatures made in his image, a story about his plans for those creatures, plans for them to fill the earth and making the whole earth a place of love and goodness, but a place where that love and goodness would be disrupted by our rebellion. Fortunately, that disruption did not deter God from continuing his plans for his image-bearing creatures and that story is still in the making. That story is now our story.

For too many people, even Christians, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible can seem disconnected. Some people have even proposed that the God described in the Old Testament is different from the God in the New Testament. This is partly due to the issue of the cultural barriers between us and the Old Testament. One purpose of this book is to show the unity of both Testaments, how they help make sense of each other and how together they make one cohesive story, a story into which we can fit.

There is a further disconnect. Between us and the biblical writings is the long and messy history of the Church. The Church seems very divided on how to interpret those writings and how to live into them. It is downright confusing to sort out all the various interpretations and practices that seem to contradict one another. How is one supposed to make sense of it all?

This book’s purpose then, is to not just overview the Biblical story from Creation to Revelation, but to show how we, as part of God’s Church, are intended to participate. God did not need to create us or the universe, He did it out of a desire to share his love and delight. God’s creation was more an act of play than of work and He desires that we actively play with him, if you will, to dance with him in His Kingdom.

The Kingdom Dance is not meant to be a solo effort, we are to dance with God and with his people. To that end, while this book can simply be read as a solo exercise, there are additional ways to engage with the material.

Biblical references are provided extensively through the book. They are there to support the text. If you read them, take the time to slow down and let God the Spirit speak to you. The Bible has been described as ancient Jewish Meditation Literature.^[1] It is best read when you give yourself time to absorb it.
There are extensive footnotes throughout the book. Whenever possible, I have provided hyperlinks to make the additional materials easily available to you. If you spend time investigating the footnotes, you will notice that I am not drawing from only one Christian tradition, but from a variety of them, allowing the richness of the different traditions to form a more complete story. To form a more complete story I also, particularly in the beginning, will use materials from the “Second Book of God” that is, book of Creation.[2]

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”[3]

For those who are not practiced in studying the Bible, Appendix A gives a summary of techniques that could be used to help understand scripture. This may prove useful for understanding when you study the Biblical references given throughout this book.
Reading the material with a group can make the most impact. The Dancing in the Kingdom Workbook provides exercises and questions to help process the material as a group. These exercises and questions will help you engage with the material by first asking you to think about how each section applies to your life and secondly to share your thoughts with others in the group so that together you can more thoughtfully “Enter the Dance” with God, with all the others that have come before, with those that are coming now and with that will continue to come until Heaven and Earth are reunited.
Finally, the best participation will be not to just read and reflect, but to dance the Kingdom dance with God. The last chapters of this book will suggest ways to take part in his activity in bringing healing to the world he loves, broken now but to be finally fully restored when He rejoins heaven and earth.

The Bible is a complex collection of literature, using many literary styles and techniques and it can be difficult to understand some parts, particularly when one part seems to contradict another part. I have found a useful principal in studying the Bible which I call “Conflicts are clues” which says that any apparent conflict or confusion in Scripture should be handled as clues to look further instead of thinking that the conflicts create contradictions which reduce the integrity of the Bible.

In our age, many regard science and theology to be in conflict. In years past, however, the issue was not about conflict but about which discipline rules over or undergirds all the other disciplines. These ideas were expressed in ways such as “theology is the queen of all sciences,” “math is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the handmaid of all sciences.”

The biblical perspective is that God speaks to us both through two books, the book of Creation and the Bible. Theology’s main goal is to understand spiritual reality and science’s main goal is to understand physical reality, but both fields can inform the other about the nature of God.

This principle of “Conflicts are Clues” applies not just to the “First Book of God” (that is, Scripture) but also to the “Second Book of God” (that is, Creation) which is practiced by the testing and revisions of theories, but also between the Two Books. During the course of history, the study of the Two Books got separated and some of those in science rejected Scripture and some of those who were Christian rejected science, leaving conflicts unresolved as contradictions. But moving forward, this does not prevent us from considering apparent conflicts between the books as clues to be investigated further.

^[1] Bible Project “Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature” Bible Project bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

[2] Rusbult, Craig. “How should we interpret the Two Books of God, in Scripture & Nature” American Scientific Affiliation http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/two-books.htm

[3] Bacon, Francis. “The Two Books of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human.” The First Book. Section.VI.Paragraph.16 1605

Reflections

Look at the four videos you can find at bibleproject.com/explore/category/how-to-read-bible-introduction/ for an overview of the Bible. How do these videos help you understand the larger context of the Bible?

Observe

Read 2 Timothy 3:14-16; Hebrews 4:12-13; Romans 15:1-6; 2 Peter 1:19-21. What is the purpose of the Bible?

A Brief Account

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

A Brief Account

The following is an Extremely Brief Account of the Very Long Story, a summary of the Bible’s story.

There was, and is, and will be, a complex person we call God, who exists as three people that we have come to know as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God decided that he wanted to expand the love that was shared between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To that end, he created an entire universe so that on one of its planets he could create an abundance of living creatures.

On that planet, he created special creatures, humans, who were made in his image such that they could love him in the way that he loved them. This universe then, would be a form of temple, a place where God can meet with his people. The garden he placed them in was where the dimensions of heaven and earth overlapped. The garden was a place where God’s good and beautiful kingdom of heaven was fully present.

Of course, these humans were not duplicate spiritual beings who were gods themselves, but physical creatures who had enough of God’s characteristics so that they could love in the way God loved. But because love is a voluntary thing that we must choose to do, we cannot love unless we have the option to not love.

God placed his first people in a garden and gave them an assignment. They were to be his representatives, priests if you will, in this garden. They were to take care of it as His representatives, His stewards in the garden. Their long-term task was to multiply and fill the earth so that the whole earth would become the place where God could meet with all his people. The entire earth was intended to be filled with God’s abundant provision for his people who would then take care of what God provided, and all the while giving and receiving and sharing the love which God would freely bestow. In this way, the kingdom of heaven would overlap with the entire kingdom of earth and God would freely mingle with his people.

The option to love or not love was provided by a test of trust. There was in the garden a tree whose fruit not only looked appealing but promised to provide the gift of all knowledge if one ate it. The humans were told to trust God and not eat the fruit of that tree. Eating that fruit would not only provide certain knowledge but would also provide death.

The results of that test are now apparent all around us. Death comes to us not only in the form of physical death, the separation of our souls from physical life, but also in the form of spiritual death, the lack of love which separates us from each other and from God. Fortunately, our current situation is not our destiny – and that is what the rest of the story is about.

God intended that death would not merely be a penalty for not trusting (or loving) but would also be the very mechanism by which he would restore us to himself. From the descendants of the first people, God separated out a family through which he would bring blessing to the entire world. Through that family that a nation would be raised and through that nation the eternal God would choose a family to accomplish the inconceivable. In that chosen family, the eternal God would cause himself to be conceived within the womb of a woman who would then give birth to a being who was both fully God and fully human. He would then be raised as a human and eventually would suffer death by execution as a human and then be resurrected as a human.

In that resurrected human body, the eternal God would return to heaven, but before doing so, he invited us to, in essence, to represent Him on earth by becoming part of his body on earth. By trusting him and accepting his Spirit, we could join with him in His death and resurrection by dying to our own self-interests and uniting with his loving interests.

He then promised to return to us again in bodily form, at which time the kingdoms of heaven and earth will again overlap. Heaven will be rejoined to earth to fulfill the intention God had from the beginning. But meanwhile, in this time between His incarnation and His eventual return, we are still called to be stewards of our currently broken world, bringing slivers of the light and hope of heaven into a world now very dark with evil and suffering and pain.

Reflections

How do you feel in comparison to the immense size of the universe? What does it mean to you, that the universe was designed with you in mind?

Observe

Read Acts 2:22-36; 7:2-50; 10:34-43; 13:16-39; 17:22-31. These passages show the various ways the gospel was presented to various audiences. As you read through the different accounts of the gospel, what stands out to you?

Let the confusion begin

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Let the confusion begin.

[Bible references: Psalm 139; Jeremiah 29:11; Ephesians 2:10]

There’s a story to our lives. Some of us feel content, for the moment, about where we are. But many of us want a story that doesn’t end where we currently are because we want our lives to be more than the mess we are or the mess we see. We have a sense that “this is not the way things should be,” something is not right either about ourselves or our bodies or our minds our situation or the world around us. We want our selves or our world to be better or to be in a better place. We are, at some level, discontent, dissatisfied, and restless.

But this new story was not about many gods but one God. This new story explained that even though things were originally good, there is a mess now, but there is a plan to make it better.

Intriguingly, although the story was begun by one human author, the story would continue to be written by many other human authors, different types of authors who spoke different languages and who lived at different times over the course of 1500 years. What held it all together was the divine author whose Spirit was breathed into each human author. What began as a set of writings by one human author, eventually became a book, a literary masterpiece with common themes, but complex literary devices, inter-textual references, poetry and songs, and different kinds of narratives (about events before the writers lived, narratives of events witnessed by the different writers, prophetic narratives about God’s judgments and plans in either the immediate or far-off future).[1]

This long, complex story told in these many texts reveals a God who has remained faithful despite our distracted and discontented ways. In fact, it became apparent when God was the author overseeing the human authors, because the human authors would foretell something about the future that made no sense at the time it was written. Sometimes, the full meaning of things written by one human author would only become clear as later writers added to the story. Sometimes, things did not make sense until God acted at a later time. And some things are still hard to make sense of.

[1] The Bible Project. “Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature” Bible Project bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

Reflections

Share the impressions you have of the Bible and of Christianity. What questions do you have?

Take time to draw a map of your story. (see the Life Map exercise at soulcare for some ideas on how to do that. soulcare.net/resources/Life%20Mapping%20Exercise.pdf)

Write down highlights and events that have shaped you and defined your life.
Name the people that have had a meaningful impact on your life.
Look for any theme that emerges from your life
Think about the complexity of your life
1. What things are hard to understand or share with others?
1. Does your life story show the impact of God on your life?
1. What questions emerge from your story?

Take time to share your story with others. As you read through this book and continue to reflect, you will begin to see how your story fits into God’s story.

As you listen to each other’s story, what themes do you see in each other’s lives?

Observe

Read Psalm 139. Think about the comprehensiveness with which the Creator knew you even before He created you and even before time and how He is intimate with you during each moment of the day. What kind of confidence does that give you?

The Story-Teller God

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

The Story-Teller God

[Bible references: Genesis 1-50; Matthew 1-28 or Matthew 13:1-23]

At one level, many, many scholars over the last two millennia have delved deeply into the details of this complex story and have tried in many ways to interpret this story. It can be frustrating to try to figure out the Creator of this universe and of this complex story. There is so much of the creation itself that we don’t understand that it “makes sense” that we would be unable to understand the one who created it. That said in what seems to be a deliberate pattern, the Creator doesn’t try to explain Himself, as much as He just does things and then tells us who He is and what He does, such as:

The creation of the world and His response to it
the first people He created and the messes they made and how He responded,
the family he chose to give His laws to, the messes they made, and how He responded to them

But we have another level at which to understand this story. When God came to us in human flesh as Jesus, a man from Nazareth, a small town in the Galilee region of ancient Israel, speaking to us as one human to another, much of his basic teaching was in the form of little stories called parables. It’s within those stories and through those stories, the stories of God’s interactions with people and the stories told by Jesus, that even children as well as adults can intuitively grasp the very character of the Creator.

Reflections

If you have the time, skim through Genesis and/or Matthew. Notice that much of the Bible is narrative, stories about things that happened. Write down your impressions of this high-level skimming read of these books and of any questions you have then share them with others.

Observe

Read Genesis 1-3 and Matthew 1-3. Compare the first three chapters of Genesis with the first three chapters of Matthew. What do they show about how God works?

Acknowledgements

The young women will dance for joy, and the men—old and young—will join in the celebration. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing. (Jeremiah 31:13 – New Living Translation)

Starting in 2017, I participated in a 9-month (12 if you include the pre-class summer reading) journey in theology made possible by the Brooklyn Fellows, a class offered by a church network called Resurrection Brooklyn in Brooklyn, NY. The course was designed to provide, through group discussions, readings and practicing the spiritual disciplines, an “understanding of the scope of the Good News of Jesus Christ: By his death and resurrection, his renewing his people and the world. We want participants to see how their individual faith stories are part of the larger story of God’s redemption so that they find new freedom and boldness to serve the Church and to engage every aspect of culture.”

As intensive as the course was, it left me restless. I needed to fill in some gaps. Of course, there were some gaps because the breadth of the material left no time to dive in deeper, it was just an introductory course. What I am trying to do in this book is fill in some of the gaps by investigating the journey of how we got here. I wanted to look at how the background of our current practices relate to our beliefs, and how the biblical basis of what we are doing now compares to earlier practices of the church.

There was another issue as well. Most people do not have the time to do the kind of extensive reading required for this course – our reading assignments amounted to more than 4000 pages – but I thought it would be useful to make the basic content of this course available to more people. The intent of this book is to provide a manageable way for the average person to explore breadth and continuity of not just the biblical story but church history as well, how our story fits into that and how we can look forward to participating with God in bringing His kingdom into the world.

Special thanks to Marc Choi who led the class and my fellow students who gave their time and attention to all the necessary reading and gave their input and questions. The church network that gave rise to Brooklyn Fellows has come to a close with the particularization of the individual congregations, but God continues his work through those people.

Prelaunching Two books

An Invitation

This blog introduces a pair of books which are now in the last stages of progress and is an invitation to offer constructive criticism during the stages of the draft’s editing.

The book, Dancing in the Kingdom is the academic version with appendices and footnotes and with an accompanying workbook with questions. The book, The Impossible Dance, is the easier-to-read version without appendices or footnotes and with questions at the end of each chapter and is also somewhat condensed.

Let me know what’s confusing, enlightening, misspelled, needs explanation, what you like or don’t like etc. This blog will roll out the books one section at a time – sometimes 2-3 blog postings in a day – 3 days a week. I expect the whole process may take approximately a year, leaving plenty of time for thoughtful comments and review and seeing other people interact with the material.

The easiest way to see the books may be to go the Contents page for each book where there will be links to each of the posted sections. For more information about the book please see “About the Book”

I welcome your thoughtful comments!