Tag: science

The contributions of the church

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 13 – Distinctives within the body of Christ

The contributions of the church

[Bible references: Matthew 5:13-16; Hebrews 10:19-39; James 2; 3:13–18; 1 Peter 2:11-25]

The church is the Body of Christ consisting of all, now and in the past, who have acknowledged their sins and have accepted the forgiveness that God offers through Jesus Christ. Awkwardly, we now have an assortment of organizations that label themselves this church or that church, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant Church, etc. But these are only different organizations in which we can find members of the Body of Christ. For that reason, this book will use the term “church,” with a lower case “c” to refer to the entire church and use the term “Church” with an upper case “C” when referring to individual local bodies of the church.

The church consists of all those members of the Body of Christ, past or present, who may be found in any local congregation or denomination or sadly, sometimes not connected to any group of fellow believers. It is the members of this church that, driven by beliefs, have throughout history made many contributions to society in all sorts of various ways. A few examples:

Science and Education

  • Whitehead and Oppenheimer insisted that modern science could not have been born except in a Christian environment.[1] Many pioneering scientists were not only theists, but Christians: Newton, Pasteur, Kepler, Paschal, Fleming, Edwards.
  • One hundred of the first 110 universities in America were founded for the express purpose of propagating the Christian religion.[2]
  • Scientific knowledge was preserved and developed in monasteries and in the universities founded by the church during the Middle Ages.[3]
  • The Christian Missionary Society taught 200,000 to read in East Africa in one generation: Secured the abolition of widow-burning and child sacrifice, founded the educational systems in China, Japan, and Korea.[4]

Health Care

  • In AD 252, the Christians of Corinth saved the city from the plague by responding to the needs of those who were simply dragged into the street.[5]
  • Monasteries served as hospitals (treating even diseases like leprosy), places of refuge. Monasteries also developed agricultural skills and knowledge.[6]
  • During the Middle Ages, the Benedictines alone were responsible for more than two thousand hospitals in Western Europe. The first free infirmary was at Monte Cassino. The first public hospital in Western Europe. When the city of Edessa was ravaged by plague, established hospitals were open to all who were afflicted.[7]

Social Justice

  • Wilberforce, along with Buxton, Macaulay, and Clark, were all evangelicals who were converted under Wesley’s ministry, and were the top leaders in ending slavery. Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of Shaftesbury, self-described “Evangelical of the Evangelicals”) pioneered child-labor laws, prohibited women working in the mines, established mental health sanitarium, built parks and libraries.[8]
  • “It was extremely common in the Greco-Roman world to throw out new female infants to die from exposure, because of the low status of women in society. The church forbade its members to do so,”[9]
  • Pagan widows lost all control of their husband’s estate when they remarried, but the church allowed widows to maintain their husband’s estate,[10]
  • In the ancient world, infanticide was not only legal, but it was also applauded. It was the early Christian church that ultimately brought an end to infanticide.[11]
  • A fifth century monk, Telemachus is credited as being the pivotal force ending the gladiator spectacles,[12]
  • The respect for those who are poor and lowly, a concept embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is based on the premise that all human lives have worth and that all lives count equally derives from Matthew 20:16 “So the last will be first, and the first last.”
  • Christians regularly and consistently cared for the poor, both Christian and non-Christian,[13]

Governance and Economics

  • The origin of the separation of church and state and the concept of limited government because the state must respect the conscience of each person comes from Matthew 22:21 – “to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”
  • Theologians in the Middle Ages were the first to develop the basic rules of economics, and the monasteries spread throughout Europe were flourishing centers of business activity,[14]

The Arts

  • Shakespeare’s writings were heavily influenced by Biblical themes[15]
  • Beethoven wrote music to inspire faith[16]
  • Leonardo da Vinci created many Biblically themed works of art[17]
  • The emperor, Constantine, built monumental churches in Rome, Byzantine, and Palestine[18]

[1] Varugheses, T.V. “The Scientific Age” The Daily Hatch thedailyhatch.org/2013/10/31/was-modern-science-born-out-of-the-christian-worldview

[2] William, James. “The Social and Historical Impact of Christianity” Probe probe.org/the-social-and-historical-impact-of-christianity

[3] Flynn, John. “Christianity’s Contribution” Catholic Online 28 Nov 2007 www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=5250

[4] William, James. “The Social and Historical Impact of Christianity” probe.org/the-social-and-historical-impact-of-christianity

[5] William, James. “The Social and Historical Impact of Christianity” probe.org/the-social-and-historical-impact-of-christianity

[6] Newman, Simon. “Monasteries in the Middle Ages” The Finer Times 29 May 2012 www.thefinertimes.com/monasteries-in-the-middle-ages

[7] Hart, David Bentley. “The Ethic of Caring for the Sick” Stand to Reason www.str.org/blog/the-ethic-of-caring-for-the-sick#.XiBmNiNOnIU

[8] Turnbull, Richard. “Shaftsbury: The Great Reformer” Knowing & Doing Fall 2015 www.cslewisinstitute.org/Fall_2015_Shaftesbury_The_Great_Reformer_page1

[9] Faith Facts “The Impact of Christianity” Faith Facts www.faithfacts.org/christ-and-the-culture/the-impact-of-christianity

[10] Keller, Tim. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism Penguin Books 2009

[11] Silver, Sandra Sweeny. “Infanticide in the Ancient World” Early Church History earlychurchhistory.org/medicine/infanticide-in-the-ancient-world

[12] Preston, S.G. “Telemachus: The Monk Who Ended the Coliseum Games” Prayer Foundation prayerfoundation.org/favoritemonks/favorite_monks_telemachus_coliseum.htm

[13] O’Brien, Brandon J. “The Social, Economic, and Political Commitments of the Early Church” Christianity Today   www.christianitytoday.com/biblestudies/articles/spiritualformation/faithaction.html

[14] Flynn, John. “Christianity’s Contribution” www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=5250

[15] Bishop, Tom. “Shakespeare and the Bible” Academia.edu www.academia.edu/12388291/Shakespeare_and_the_Bible

[16] Mauro, JP. “The little discussed faith of Beethoven” Aleteia 12/22/19 aleteia.org/2019/12/22/the-little-discussed-faith-of-beethoven

[17] Demar, Gary. “The Impact of Christianity on the World” The American Vision 15 Dec 2009 americanvision.org/1403/impact-of-christianity-on-world

[18] Faith From Evidence “Christianity and Architecture” Faith from evidence www.faithfromevidence.org/christianity-and-architecture.html

Observe

Read Matthew 5:13-16; Hebrews 10:19-39; James 2; 3:13–18; 1 Peter 2:11-25.  How is the church encouraged to do good deeds?

The Temple Maker

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 2 – The God who created

The Temple Maker

[Bible references: Genesis 1-2; Exodus 26; 1 Kings 6; Job; Psalm 8; 95; 100; 104 and others; Proverbs 8:22-31; Isaiah 44:21-28; 45:5-12; 51:4-12; 55:6-13; Matthew 26:61; I Corinthians 6:19-20; Revelation 21-22]

There has been much debate about how to interpret the creation account. There have been various attempts to understand creation as physical processes that had occurred (over shorter or longer periods, depending on your analysis) because in our current cultural context we default to thinking of creation in physical, scientific terms. But what if (surprise! surprise!) we consider the biblical text to be a theological text instead of a scientific one, about functional origins and not about material origins.[1]

The cosmos can only function as sacred space once God has inhabited it and people in his image are there. God is declaring purpose for the cosmos as an ordered space for people and as sacred space where he will dwell. This is what defines the divine activity …Adopting and promoting a vision and mission statement will not change how the institution operates. But it articulates a purpose and identity that may not have been realized or present before and proclaims that as its purpose. Genesis 1 is doing something similar. It is articulating a purpose through a mission statement (people living out their designated role as the image of God) and a vision statement (seeing the world around us as sacred space where God is living among his people and being in relationship with them). .[2]

In the last few decades, research has uncovered much more about the culture in the Ancient Near East than ever before. It has been discovered that in Ancient Near East cultures, the Genesis account would not have interpreted the creation account in terms of physical processes but rather in terms of assigning meaning and purpose. So, as we read the Creation account in Genesis 1, on the first three days the spaces of light and dark, waters above and below, and the land are being assigned a purpose. The next three days the populations of those spaces are assigned a purpose: the sun and the moon and stars, the birds and fish, the land animals.

In this perspective, the story of creation is seen more as a story about the dedication of a temple, where the universe and the world were dedicated as a sacred space, a space where God would dwell with his people. Therefore, the seventh day is when God rested from the act of dedicating the earth, which would now be the place where He would now live with his image-bearers. If you read Genesis 1-2, you will see that, unlike the other days, there is no “there was evening and there was morning.” That is because we are living in the seventh day.

The completion of God’s temple would be later remembered by the seventh day celebration of the Sabbath. Although God’s temple was completed by the seventh day, it was not a time where God ceased to do everything. The still continuing seventh day is the time when the “temple” which is our “home” is completed so that God and we, as his co-regents, can settle in and do the things that our home was designed for. Jesus in John 5:1-7 clarified this idea where he explained, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” Living into this sacred space would entail us taking part with God in his continual acts of creating and sustaining the universe. That is the perspective of Eve, when she gave birth to Cain, she recognized that “I’ve created a man with Yahweh.”[3]

In Genesis 2, the focus moves to the humans God created and how they were to function in that sacred space where the Garden of Eden is the center. Genesis 2 is also where God’s name, “Yahweh,” begins to be used. Genesis 1 introduces the God as the Creator of the universe whereas Genesis 2 introduces the God who in establishing a personal relationship with the people he created uses a personal name.[4]

The cosmos that God created was intended to be a temple, the place where He would meet with his people. The temple/creation imagery permeates and unites all of scripture from the first book, Genesis, to the last book, Revelation. The temple/creation theme shows up in places like in the stories of Noah, Moses, and Abraham, in the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple, in Job’s dialog with Yahweh, in the poetry of Psalms[5], in prophecies of Isaiah, in the body Jesus and in us as his Body and finally in the depiction of reuniting of heaven and earth. Each instance shows its own unique aspect of the temple, so that when combined with each other, they show a more complete picture of how God meets with us and provides for us and what he has intended for us. We see a complex picture of the temple as a physical place in Creation and at the same time the temple is within us, inside the bodies of all of those who call on his name. In both those cases we can see the provision of God who 1) abundantly fills all of Creation in ways that exceed our imagination and exceed the capacity of any book to tell and, 2) abundantly fills us with His strength and His Spirit so that we can fulfill the desire He has for us to “cultivate and keep” the abundant place He has provided for us.

One of the benefits of considering only the theological aspects of the Creation accounts, or the why of creation, is that we don’t have to be as highly concerned about the how of creation, or the scientific/physical accounts of creation. When scientific creation accounts are proposed and are not perceived to be correct because they don’t seem to theologically fit, we don’t need to despair. It may be that the various proposed scientific explanations simply don’t theologically fit because they just don’t or because we just don’t understand just how they could theologically fit. We know that the sciences are limited and that theories will change as more discoveries are made. Sometimes those theories may seem to move closer or further from our limited theological understandings, but our theology is not constrained by whatever the current science may indicate. In the meanwhile, we are free to explore the science and wonder in awe and marvel at just how God managed to do it all while humbly admitting that we don’t have the mind of God and how much higher his ways are than our ways.

[1] Walton, John. “The Lost World of Adam and Eve,” Proposition 3, InterVarsity Press. 2015 Kindle Edition. pp. 35-45; Driver, Cory. “Commentary on Genesis 1:1-5” Working Preacher 10 Jan 2021 www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/baptism-of-our-lord-2/commentary-on-genesis-11-5-5; Carlson, Reed. “Commentary on Genesis 1:1-2:4a 12” Working Preacher Sept 2011 www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/creation-by-the-word/commentary-on-genesis-11-24a-5; Throntveit, Mark. “Commentary on Genesis 1:1-2:4a; or 1:1-5,26-2:4a 1 Working Preacher 1 Sept 2011 www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/creation/commentary-on-genesis-11-31-21-4

[2] Walton, John. “Material or Function in Genesis 1? John Walton Responds” Biologos 3 Apr 2015 biologos.org/series/reflections-on-the-lost-world-of-genesis-1-by-john-walton/articles/material-or-function-in-genesis-1-john-walton-responds

[3] Friedman, Richard Elliot, Commentary on the Torah, Harper Collins, 2003 Location 6942 of 37412

[4] There will be more discussion on that name in “Hope in the Brokenness,” Chapter 4

[5] Muran, Alexej. “The Creation Theme in Selected Psalms” Geoscience Research Institute 1 May 2015 www.grisda.org/the-creation-theme-in-selected-psalms

Reflect

Does viewing the universe as a temple affect the way we look at it?

Observe

Read Proverbs 8. This proverb personifies God’s wisdom. Read how God is describing how His wisdom is built into the very framework and fabric of this temple we call Creation. How can we sense God’s presence with us because of how His wisdom should be speaking to us?

Playful and orderly

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 2 – The God who created

[Bible references: Genesis 1; 3:6; Job 26:7-14; Psalm 102:25-28; 104:26; Proverbs 8:30-31; Jeremiah 9:24; Zechariah 8:4; Romans 1:18-32; 5:12-20]

It would be more conventional to title this section, “Creative and Orderly,” but creativity is just a part of broader category of play. Although many experts disagree on how to define play[1], we may think of play as activity which is typically not productive and is done only because one wants to do it and is usually a fun activity involving other people and will typically help people bond together.

When it comes to the Creation, God did not have to create anything. God did not need the universe or anything in it – not the planets, nor the stars, nor the creatures. God created the heavens and the earth for the delight of it, and He did it because He wanted to share heaven and earth with his image-bearers. This spirit of playfulness is reflected in many of God’s creatures[2] including Leviathan and humans. God’s playfulness also shows up in other interesting places in the Bible.

When Job complains about the difficulties he is going through, God seems to admonish him by “putting Job in his place” and citing all the ways in which God’s ways are higher than Job’s ways. But God does not follow through with any discipline of Job but rather begins the process of restoring Job’s fortunes. In response, Job confesses, “I spoke of things I did not understand … I retract my words and I repent in dust and ashes.” … And yet, Job changes an interesting behavior – he no longer rose early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of his children, worrying that “perhaps they have sinned.” Job seems to have understood what Shams-ud-din Muhammed wrote later on:

the difference between our life and a saint’s is that the saint knows that the spiritual path is like a chess game with God and that God has made such a fantastic move that the saint trips over joy in surrender whereas we think we have a thousand serious moves.[3]

Another instance of playing occurs in Mark 6, when Jesus takes a late-night walk on a very windy lake, walking as if to go by his disciples. Of course, they were initially terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. But he got in the boat and the waters calmed down. He could have calmed the waters down before the disciples started to go on the lake. He could have chosen another way to make his point … but he decided to do it that way.

God’s creativity can be seen within the created world in the extremely diverse types of plants and animals: differences in colors and shapes; different ways of digesting food; different ways of moving and observing the environment to name a few. The creativity we see is awesome. From out of nothingness, from no previous model, God created a whole system of particles and energy fields that interact with each other to form the building blocks of subatomic particles which are used to form atoms, which are used to form molecules of all sorts of complexity, which are then used to form planets and stars (actually, the fusion reaction in stars is used to create larger molecules from smaller ones). And at least one planet was used to create living things like plants and animals in all their complexity and then those living things were used to create communities (ecosystems) that allowed living things to thrive and flourish.

Yet, within the overwhelming creativity displayed within all the diversity of living things there is an order that is imposed by natural processes, sometimes called scientific laws. Christians, like Francis Bacon, pursued these laws as an extension of God’s moral laws in the universe, which then led to the development of modern science.[4] It is within science that we examine orderly processes at work that we call the natural laws which describe how all physical things behave: like the forces of gravity, electrical forces, etc.

There is no disobeying these natural laws. If you think that you can try to violate them, you’d be wrong. For instance, if you are on earth and stand on the top of a table and then jump off with the assumption that you will not be subject to gravity but rather float around without falling to the floor, you’d be wrong. You can’t violate gravity. You can try to set up circumstances that will cause other forces to come into play – such as airplanes do when they use aerodynamic forces that counteract gravity – but you simply can’t violate gravity, and there will be consequences if you try.

By observing the laws of the created order, we can ascertain some aspects of the character of God. The natural laws that govern how things are supposed to behave reveals a God who expects things to behave, and that violations are not tolerated. But when image-bearers were brought into the world there was a new level of complexity added to this physical model constrained by natural, physical laws. Because image-bearers were created to reflect God’s transcendence, those image bearers were given moral freedom, the ability to accept or reject God’s rule, the ability to choose to be good or not good. And just like attempts to violate physical laws have consequences, so do attempts to violate moral laws. However, the framework that provides order is also the scaffolding for creativity and play. The order that allows us to study God’s ordered creation also allows us to observe the activity of the living God when He does the unexpected.

[1] Edgar, Brian. “The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality” Chapter 5: Theology: Ludic(rous) Thinking, Theories of Play Cascade Books 2017 (e-book)

[2] Yu, Alan. “Which animals play, and why?” WHYY 15 Aug 2019 whyy.org/segments/which-animals-play-and-why/

[3] Hafiz (or Shams-ud-din Muhammad Tripping over Joy (translated by Daniel Ladinsky) (c. 1320-1389) wrote about God as his Friend, the Beloved, the Beautiful One. from reference by Edgar, Brian “The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality” Chapter 4: Spirituality: Playing with friends, Competing with God

[4] Harrison, Peter, “Christianity and the rise of western science” ABC Religion and Ethics, 8 May 2012, www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm; Armstrong, David, “Christianity Crucial to the origin of science,” Patheos, 18 Oct 2015, www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/christianity-crucial-to-the-origin-of-science.html; Hannam, James. “How Christianity Led to the Rise of Modern Science” Christian Research Institute www.equip.org/articles/christianity-led-rise-modern-science/

Observe

Read Romans 1:18-32.  Reflect on how natural laws reflect the character of God. Based just on natural laws, what kind of character does that reveal about God?

Interlude

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

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

Interlude

[Bible references: Psalm 19]

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. That describes a lot of human behavior; we get distracted by the pretty garbage.

Since the time of Adam and Eve we’ve had the temptation to place ourselves at the center of the universe, dismissing the idea that we did not create the natural beauty of the world around us but that we can possess and control it ourselves, that we are the masters of all we see. We are tempted to dismiss the reality that we are part of a universe we did not create with the idea that we can define the universe which we think revolves around us.

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.

What can get confused is that this story is contained in the Bible which is often presented as a disconnected story. The Old and New Testaments of the Bible can seem disconnected because of the cultural barriers between us and the testaments. Some people even think the God described in the Old Testament is different from the God in the New Testament.

That disconnect is exasperated by 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, leaving us with a confusion of various interpretations and practices that seem to contradict one another. How is one supposed to make sense of it all?

However, it is possible to obtain a clearer understanding of how both Testaments make one cohesive story, a story into which we can fit. When we see how the unified story than runs from Creation to Revelation, we can then see how we, as part of God’s church, are intended to participate in that story. 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, particularly the shorter passages, 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 online materials 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. There are questions at the end of each chapter that ask you to reflect on the material and then read related biblical passages to think more deeply about various issues. 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. Part 3 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 and 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. 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 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

Observe

Read Psalm 19. This Psalm captures a response to what Francis Bacon called the two books of God:  the Book of Creation and the Book of Scripture. How do you respond to the “two books”?

Playful and Orderly

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of Contents

Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom, Chapter 2 – The God who created

[Bible references: Genesis 1; 3:6; 51:6; Job 26:7-14; Psalm 102:25-28; 104:26; Proverbs 8:30-31; Jeremiah 9:24; Zechariah 8:4; Romans 1:20; 5:12-20]

It would be more conventional to title this section, “Creative and Orderly,” but the creativity is just a part of broader category of play. Although many experts disagree on how to define play[1], we may think of play as activity which is typically not productive and is done only because one wants to do it and is usually a fun activity involving other people and will typically help people bond together.

When it comes to the Creation, God did not have to create anything. God did not need the universe or anything in it – not the planets, nor the stars, nor the creatures. God created the heavens and the earth for the delight of it, and He did it because He wanted to share heaven and earth with his image-bearers. This spirit of playfulness is reflected in many of God’s creatures[2] including Leviathan and humans. God’s playfulness also shows up in other interesting places in the Bible.

When Job complains about the difficulties he is going through, God seems to admonish him by “putting Job in his place” and citing all the ways in which God’s ways are higher than Job’s ways. But God does not follow through with any discipline of Job but rather begins the process of restoring Job’s fortunes. In response, Job confesses, “I spoke of things I did not understand … I retract my words and I repent in dust and ashes.” … And yet, Job changes an interesting behavior – he no longer rose early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of his children, worrying that “perhaps they have sinned.” Job seems to have understood what Shams-ud-din Muhammed wrote later on:

the difference between our life and a saint’s is that the saint knows that the spiritual path is like a chess game with God and that God has made such a fantastic move that the saint trips over joy in surrender whereas we think we have a thousand serious moves.[3]

Another instance of playing occurs in Mark 6, when Jesus takes a late-night walk on a very windy lake, walking as if to go by his disciples. Of course, they were initially terrified, thinking they were seeing a ghost. But he got in the boat and the waters calmed down. He could have calmed the waters down before the disciples started to go on the lake. He could have chosen another way to make his point … but he decided to do it that way.

God’s creativity can be seen within the created world in the extremely diverse types of plants and animals: differences in colors and shapes; different ways of digesting food; different ways of moving and observing the environment to name a few. The creativity we see is awesome. From out of nothingness, from no previous model, God created a whole system of particles and energy fields that interact with each other to form the building blocks of subatomic particles which are used to form atoms, which are used to form molecules of all sorts of complexity, which are then used to form planets and stars (actually, the fusion reaction in stars is used to create larger molecules from smaller ones). And at least one planet was used to create living things like plants and animals in all their complexity and then those living things were used to create communities (ecosystems) that allowed living things to thrive and flourish.

Yet, within the overwhelming creativity displayed within all the diversity of living things there is an order that is controlled by a set of ordered processes, some of which we call scientific (natural) laws. Christians, like Francis Bacon, pursued these laws as an extension of God’s moral laws in the universe, which then led to the development of modern science.[4] It is within science that we examine orderly processes at work that we call the natural laws which describe how all physical things behave: like the forces of gravity, electrical forces, etc.

There is no disobeying these natural laws. If you think that you can try to violate them, you’d be wrong. For instance, if you are on earth and stand on the top of a table and then jump off with the assumption that you will not be subject to gravity but rather float around without falling to the floor, you’d be wrong. You can’t violate gravity. You can try to set up circumstances that will cause other forces to come into play – such as airplanes do when they use aerodynamic forces that counteract gravity – but you simply can’t violate gravity, and there will be consequences if you try.

By observing the laws of the created order, we can ascertain some aspects of the character of God. The natural laws that govern how things are supposed to behave reveals a God who expects things to behave, and that violations are not tolerated. But when image-bearers were brought into the world there was a new level of complexity added to this physical model constrained by natural, physical laws.

On the one hand, we image-bearers are physical creatures and are therefore subject to the natural laws, but on the other hand we image-bearers were created to reflect God’s transcendence and were even given dominion over the creation into which God had placed us. Within that capacity, we image-bearers were given a moral freedom, the freedom to choose between good and evil. This freedom could not be given without some risk, because in order for image-bearers to be able to reflect God’s character of being good and choosing to do good there must be the possibility for the image-bearers to be able to choose to not be good.

And just as there are natural, physical laws that govern how physical things behave with consequences for trying to violate those laws, God has also imposed spiritual, moral laws to govern how the image-bearers ought to behave in the good universe He created with consequences for violating those moral laws. Sometimes the sin of one generation is passed down to the next. But regardless of whether a particular sin is passed to from one generation to another, the penalty for sin is physical and spiritual death.

[1] Edgar, Brian. “The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality” Chapter 5: Theology: Ludic(rous) Thinking, Theories of Play

[2] Yu, Alan. “Which animals play, and why?” WHYY 15 Aug 2019 whyy.org/segments/which-animals-play-and-why/

[3] Hafiz (or Shams-ud-din Muhammad Tripping over Joy from reference Edgar, Brian “The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality” Chapter 4: Spirituality: Playing with friends, Competing with God

[4] Harrison, Peter, “Christianity and the rise of western science” ABC Religion and Ethics, 8 May 2012, www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm; Armstrong, David, “Christianity Crucial to the origin of science,” Patheos, 18 Oct 2015, www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/christianity-crucial-to-the-origin-of-science.html; Hannam, James. “How Christianity Led to the Rise of Modern Science” Equip.Org, 17 Jan 2017, http://www.equip.org/article/christianity-led-rise-modern-science

Reflect

As you view the world, what seems more apparent to you, creativity or order?

Observe

Read Romans 1:18-32.  Reflect on how natural laws reflect the character of God. Based just on natural laws, what kind of character does that reveal about God?

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!