Missional: To both "Talk" and "Walk"

The Paradigm of "Call" and "Send" from Jesus to His Followers

This model of God calling and then sending people to do his will of "blessing" to bring Shalom into God's creation continues from the old Testament into its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ call to people in the gospels was to “follow me.” But Jesus also warned them, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). In other words, “following” cannot be just an add-on, a means for blessing to our current lifestyles. Jesus is demanding that his followers leave the lives that the world offers as the “good life,” and replace it with what God has determined to be the good life.

Brueggemann states, “It is clear that Jesus enacts a major claim upon people’s lives that places their lives in crisis, the same sovereign claim that is so uncompromising in the narratives of Abraham and Moses” (The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship, p. 95).

To become a follower of Jesus is to honestly assess the broken, unjust, and oppressive systems of the world and how I personally have capitulated to these systems and have embraced and contributed to their destructive power in the lives of others and of God’s good creation.

But that is not all. To be a follower of Jesus also means to decide, often through a pool of sweat and tears, to no longer be a part of that and to instead follow the ways of the sovereign King, Jesus Christ. Each one of us is in our own “Ur,” and God is calling us to “go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.”

Brueggemann writes, “God means for us to disengage from the postures, habits, and assumptions that define the world of power and injustice that is so devoid of mercy and compassion in every area of life” (p. 95).

This is the radical life into which Christ is calling his people. He wants me, as a leader of a missional Christian community, to direct these people into “an alternative life in the world” (p. 99).

This life is marked, in Brueggemann’s words, by both “talk” and “walk.” Our “talk” is the proclamation of the gospel that Jesus commanded his disciples to proclaim: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

This, of course, is not the gospel that most American churches are proclaiming. They, instead, have focused on many other things. My particular church background proclaimed a gospel of individual salvation from eternal damnation and a promise of heaven after one dies.

The gospel of the Kingdom is much more holistic than this truncated gospel. It proclaims that God’s original intention for this world will not be thwarted. It proclaims that through Christ, all things will be restored. It offers people the opportunity to actually be used by God to bring healing to this broken world, with the hopeful anticipation that one day God will bring it all to culmination.

Our “talk,” then, exists alongside our “walk.”

Missional: Who God Calls He Sends

A look at the Moses Paradigm of "Called and Sent"

Walter Brueggemann, in an essay entitled "Evangelism and Discipleship" in the book The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship explains that the paradigm for a missional community is that God calls and sends. God calls people into relationship with the Godhead, and then sends us on a mission to “go” into a an intentional life that sets aside our purposes and agendas for the sake of God’s.

When Moses is confronted by God, “YHWH issues a series of first-person resolves, all concerning what YHWH intends to do in the face of Pharaonic oppression” (Brueggemann, p. 97).

God says,
“I have seen the misery of my people… I am concerned about their suffering… I have come down to rescue them” (Exodus 3:7-9).

But Brueggemann points out that YHWH does not then say, “Therefore, I will go to Pharaoh.” No, instead (and surprisingly) God says, “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (verse 10).

God’s modus operandi is to call humans to himself and then to send those humans to do his mission.

Today's called ones (that is, those that I lead in my ministry) have been sent by God into the world as “a community of Shalom.”

Gospel ministry, in this framework, is more holistic than what we’ve seen in North America in the 20th Century. The left side of the Christian church focused mainly on economic justice through social action, while the right side focused mainly on individualistic evangelism and personal ethics. The gospel is not “either-or,” but “both-and” these. When one side of this holistic gospel is emphasized over the other, the gospel is truncated.

As Brueggemann states, “The old quarrel between evangelism and social action is a cheap, uniformed argument. It is precisely the talk of the evangel that matches the walk of action in the world on behalf of the new governance that is proclaimed in the evangel.” (p. 104)

Next: Jesus and His followers

Missional: To be Called and to be Sent

A look at the Abrahamic Paradigm of "Called and Sent"

For my application to Fuller Seminary's D.Min. program, I was given the task to reflect on a chapter from The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship by Walter Brueggemann.

Brueggemann does an excellent job articulating that the God that calls people to follow him also sends them on mission. God calls individuals and communities to love him and to obey his governance over all things, and then sends these individuals and communities to proclaim the Kingdom of God.

As I reflect on what Brueggemann has written, I am deeply encouraged to create a missional community – filled with people who have heard the call and have obeyed the command to go – that will proclaim to the world through our “walk” and our “talk” that God is King, and, therefore, life as we have known it (with all its brokenness, injustice, and oppressive regimes) can now be transformed into the flourishing that God intends for his Creation.

Brueggemann looks at Abraham and Moses in the Old Testament and Jesus and his early followers in the New Testament to demonstrate how God operates through this “Call and Send” blueprint. Today, we'll look at Abraham.

Abraham is the paradigm of God’s missional call and missional mandate to humans. God called Abraham away from his settled life in Ur. “The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you’” (Genesis 12:1). Brueggemann points out that with this command to go, “Abraham is propelled into an orbit of reality that completely preempts his life, and removes him completely from any purpose or agenda he may have entertained for himself before that moment” (p. 93).

Abraham’s call immediately was followed by being sent by God on his mission. Not just any mission, but, as Brueggemann states, “The sending of Abraham (and Sarah) is perhaps the overarching missional dispatch in all of Scripture” (p. 96). The dispatch: “Through you all peoples on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

Brueggemann states that Abraham’s call and mission to be a “blessing” is central to understanding God’s mission in this world. “Blessing is that the world should be generous, abundant, and fruitful, bespeaking effectiveness in generative fertility, material abundance, and this-worldly prosperity. Perhaps the best way to speak of this mandate is to think of ‘shalom’ in the broadest scope. Israel’s life is to make the world work better according to the intention of the creator. That is the immense mission given to this one man and his family!” (p. 96).

God’s intention for the world is for Shalom. I have long loved Cornelius Plantinga’s definition of Shalom: “We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight…, the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.” (Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: The Breviary of Sin, p. 10)

Abraham’s mission flows through the People of God in the Old Testament, is brought to fulfillment in Jesus Christ and thus becomes the mission of today’s People of God, the church. Abraham’s call and mission in Genesis 12 is the hinge of God’s mission, “so that the general condition of curse in the world is turned to a general condition of blessing, life, and well-being.” This, then, is the mission of all those who are “Abraham’s seed” (Romans 9:8), i.e., the people of who name Christ as Lord.

As a pastor, my work needs to align with this Abrahamic paradigm – calling people into relationship with God and into his mission to “go” into a new way of life, one that completely preempts the normal American life – an intentional life that sets aside our purposes and agendas for the sake of God’s. As a community, we are called to God’s mission of bringing Shalom into every nook and cranny of his creation, doing our part in reversing the curse so that every person can experience God’s blessing.

Breaking Up with LeBron

As the old song goes, breaking up is hard to do. But we must do it. We must move on.

And here's a way to do it and help the needy while you're at it.

Thanks to a campaign called "Break Up With LeBron," starting Wednesday, July 14th, we can take our old LeBron gear to all Yours Truly restaurants, and they will be sent to homeless shelters in Miami.

Everybody who does will be given a one-of-a-kind "It’s not me, it’s you" break up with LeBron tee shirt.

You can purchase the "It’s not me, it’s you" break up t-shirt through the BreakUpWithLeBron.com website, and all proceeds will go to my favorite Christian ministry in Cleveland: The City Mission.

As they say over at BreakUpWithLeBron, "Its time to get over this. Let’s stand proud and give back."

The good folks over at StoneKap Productions have produced this video to help us break up with LeBron. Good job, guys!

Watch the Video that the Cavaliers Showed LeBron James

More Than a Player.

The Cavs wanted to capture the "HOME" theme for LeBron James with this video they showed him yesterday during their turn to pitch their team to him.

Michael Youssef: Confusing Americans with Christians

Michael Youssef

"Make no mistake about it: the moral character of a nation, as expressed in its policies and laws, can evoke God's response. I don't mean that our heavenly Father would send fire and brimstone from heaven in response to a nation that embraces ungodly laws and policies. But He can and will withdraw His protection from a people who once declared Him as their Lord and then become rebellious and an immoral affront to Him." - Michael Youssef

In a commentary at OneNewsNow.com (from Donald Wildmon's American Family News Network), Michael Youssef seeks to answer the question, "Can there be a Christian nation?"

As I read Youssef's column, it struck me that Youssef is confused about the difference between the United States of America and the Christian Nation that is comprised of Bible-believing, Jesus-following Christians, no matter what country they live in.

At one point, Youssef says, “A country, or even a culture, cannot be Christian — only individuals can be Christians.” But then he negates that statement by making the case that America is, in fact, a Christian nation, rooted in Christianity, founded by Christians, and that all the citizens of America need to repent and get back to God. To do this, he is initiating "GODSAVEOURCOUNTRY.COM" to return America (and all Americans) to its Christian roots so as to ensure America's security since God "can and will withdraw His protection from a people who once declared Him as their Lord."

He later makes this caveat: “Let me be absolutely clear, America is not ‘the new Israel.’” And then says, “but the lessons we learn from Israel of old can be of immense importance today.”

I agree with this statement whole-heartedly. But he and I apply these “lessons” that we learn from Israel in different ways. Youssef applies them directly to the nation of the United States – “We are being made aware once again of His (God’s) desire for this generation of Americans to return to Him and to the faith of our Founding Fathers.” In other words, today's Americans are like the Israelites who were thrown into exile - we have turned away from the God that founded our nation.

I disagree with this way of applying Israel's history to our contemporary setting. I believe that the Bible wants us to not apply the lessons of Israel to any contemporary political state, but only to the contemporary People of God – that is, Christians. Today’s followers of Christ are a “holy nation;” it is not limited by any geographical or political boundary – see 1 Peter 2:9.

Here is the weakness of what Youssef is attempting to do:

He is not making a clear differentiation between Bible-believing, Jesus-following Christians and the American populace at large. In other words, he implies that all Americans are back-slidden Christians, needing to return to who they really are. He says,

“As believers, we should know and believe deeply that God desires for our leaders and judges to repent for shedding the blood of the unborn. A loving heavenly Father is waiting for them to repent for approving and sanctioning sins that are abominations to Him. God desires for His children to repent from the spirit of materialism and placing our hope in possessions.

“The Lord's desire for His people is to stop serving Him in a half-hearted manner. He longs for His people to thirst and hunger for righteousness and not for ease and comfort. God continuously calls us to Himself.”

About whom is Youssef speaking? If he wants Christians (who happen to be citizens of the United States) to repent of being lax in our battle to protect the oppressed (i.e., the unborn) and to repent of our capitulating to the capitalistic materialism of American culture, then I would want to say, “Amen!”

But this is not what Youssef is saying. He is saying that the United States, as a whole, is a Christian nation, needing to repent and return to God. He believes that since the United States, as an entire nation, is experiencing “economic woes and national disasters,” and a weakened national security, then this is evidence that America’s relationship with God is off track. While he may say that he doesn't see America as “the new Israel,” his way of applying the Old Testament to America certainly betrays that statement.

Youssef is improperly equating the United States with the true “Christian Nation,” that is, the people of God who follow the Lord of lords and King of kings.

On this Independence Day weekend, we Christians can be proud citizens of the United States. But we can do this without equating our nation with Israel. As good citizens, we should vote for good laws that reflect God’s creative order, we should advocate for justice where we see injustice, we should pray for the common good of all citizens (whether they be Christian or not), and we should seek to be light in the darkness of a secular nation.

As Christians, we will continue to pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, by the means of the One we follow, Jesus Christ, who originally brought his Kingdom into this world through service and suffering.

As God's chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, on July 4 and every day, we will declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.

And we will invite our fellow Americans to become members of God's true Christian Nation - the Universal Church - so that they can do so as well.

My New Ministry: Reaching College Students at Stark State College and Kent State-Stark

Today, July 1, I am moving my CCO college outreach ministry to a more local place, the campus that contains Stark State College and Kent State University-Stark.

God has had this campus on my heart for a long time: a desire to see students at these two schools meet Jesus and join in His cause to bring redemption to the world. There are a lot of students at these schools (9,400 at Stark State and 4,000 at KSU-Stark) with limited Christian influence on campus.

After much prayer–seeking God’s guidance, and for a door to open as an opportunity to serve–I have accepted the position of Pastor for College Students and Young Adults at Jackson Friends Church.

This means I will remain on staff with CCO and continue to raise my financial support from people who want to see college students’ lives changed through the gospel proclamation that I will provide at Stark State and KSU-Stark.

Please pray for our family, especially for our kids, Trey (11), Joel (10) and Kaira (10), who have to transition to a new church after several years of enjoying the children’s ministry at The Chapel.

Linda and I have been deeply involved at The Chapel as well. I have led an adult community, helped with the children’s ministry, and also worked in local missions. Linda has worked in women’s ministry and has been a friend and spiritual helper for some women there. We will miss The Chapel!

One more concern is that we live in Lake Township, and many of our community connections have been through our kid’s participation in Lake schools and Linda’s Physical Therapy practice here. Please pray that the transition to Jackson Township will not hinder our connections in Lake, and that we will have new connections with people in Jackson.

Bob and Linda with Trey, Kaira, and Joel

Click the image below for a pdf of this newsletter!

Friend of Kuyper Gets a Facelift!

If you haven't been over to my other web resource Friend of Kuyper recently, check it out!
All new material and a new look!

REDEMPTION: To Become Truly Human (Worldview Revisited)

Our redemption is not some supplement to being human; it's what makes it possible to be really human, to take up the mission that marks us as God's image bearers.

Perhaps the most moving article in the series that Comment recently published on a rearticulation of the Creation-Fall-Redemption story was written by James K.A. Smith on the Redemption.

Listen to these words about our Creator-God:

__“What love is this that would take such risks?
__The covenant God of Israel and Father of Jesus Christ is an extravagant, inventive Creator who—in what almost looks like madness—entrusted the care and unpacking of creation to us, his creatures, commissioned as his image bearers. Deputized and gifted to carry out this mission of image-bearing cultivation, we are to work and play, to make love and art, to till the earth and transform its fruit into our daily bread while also incarnating our most outlandish dreams in cathedrals and skyscrapers. Such image-bearer culture-making will be most fruitful when it runs with the grain of the universe—when our work and play runs in the grooves of God's life-giving norms.
__Creation, then, comes with a mission and a vocation. Being God's image bearers is a task and responsibility entrusted to creatures. If God created from and for love, then he also created us with the invitation to love the world and thus foster its—and our—flourishing.”

Wow. Amen! But as we’ve seen in the second chapter of the story (FALL), this vision of the wonderful creation is deeply marred:

__“While God's self-giving love entrusted to us the care and cultivation of his creation, humanity seized this as an entitlement rather than receiving it as a gift. Thus our mission of unfolding the potential latent in creation took the form of unfettered invention rather than normed co-creation.”

Redemption, then, is the story of our good Creator not leaving us to our own devices, but actively intervening through Jesus Christ.

__“Jesus of Nazareth appears as the second Adam who models for us what it looks like to carry out that original mission of image-bearing and cultivation. The Word became flesh, not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world—to (re)enable us to carry out that creative commission. Indeed, God saves us so that—once again, in a kind of divine madness—we can save the world, can (re)make the world aright. And God's redemptive love spills over in its cosmic effects, giving hope to this groaning creation.”

This is an incredible statement of the purpose of redemption. Many, many Christians in America have a different vision of redemption from this. For most American evangelicals, the Word became flesh in order to save our souls out of this fallen world. Redemption is reduced to forgiveness in this life (while we are in these sinful physical bodies) and spiritual bliss in the next life (when our immaterial selves escape this physical realm to live in “heaven”). Jamie Smith does not get into this in this particular article, but this physical/spiritual dualism does not come from the Bible, but from Plato. Against this pagan understanding, N.T. Wright writes in Surprised by Hope, “We are not saved as souls, but as wholes."

Redemption, therefore, is not about saving humanity from this creation, scrapping it and providing human immaterial souls with eternal existence someplace else. God originally created humans as his Image-bearers, and therefore God is redeeming that image-bearing capacity in us. Smith writes,

__“So our redemption is not some supplement to being human; it's what makes it possible to be really human, to take up the mission that marks us as God's image bearers. Saint Irenaeus captures this succinctly: "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." Redemption doesn't tack on some spiritual appendage, nor does it liberate us from being human in order to achieve some sort of angelhood. Rather, redemption is the restoration of our humanity, and our humanity is bound up with our mission of being God's co-creative culture-makers.”

So, why are humans redeemed? For a spiritual immaterial afterlife? Or for something so much more? Smith tells us the purpose of God's redemption:

__“While God's redemption is cosmic, not anthropocentric, it nonetheless operates according to that original creational scandal whereby humanity is commissioned as ambassador, and even co-creator, for the sake of the world. In an equally scandalous way, we are now commissioned as co-redeemers. Redemption is the re-orientation and re-direction of our culture-making capacities… While not quite a matter of ‘save the cheerleader, save the world,’ the scandalous economy of redemption does seem to suggest, ‘save humanity, save the world.’”

The rest of Smith’s article is written so beautifully that I urge you to go over and read it in full. In marvelous, almost poetic prose, he give us snippets of what redemption looks like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like. Wow! Amen!

And praise God!


Posts in this series on WORLDVIEW REVISITED:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Wonder, Heartbreak, Hope
For more on this Reformational Worldview, see my web resource,
Friend of Kuyper

FALL - Making Sense of Our Brokenness and Pain (Worldview Revisited)

__"God saw all that he had made and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).
__But things are not looking so hot these days. What happened? Why is everything so bent and broken? Why, God? Why am I so bent, so broken? And others, too?"

With those words, David Naugle opens an excellent article in COMMENT in a series on Creation-Fall-Redemption. Naugle, of course, is dealing with “The Fall.”

The Fall, understood biblically, explains why things are not the way that (we feel instinctively) things should be. When bad things happen, we wonder, “Why?” And the Bible’s answer is “The Fall.”

“This is the second ‘act’ in the overall narrative of the Scriptures, the next major theme in a biblical view of life and the world. First, there is the good news of creation, but now we have the bad news of the fall. It introduces fundamental conflict into the biblical drama, which must be resolved before God's story ends. It shows, contrary to other worldviews, that evil is not rooted in creation itself, but in the moral rebellion of the human race against the divine authority of the holy God. I sometimes call this episode the ‘uncreation’ because of the damage it did to God's very good world: how it twisted his intentions for humanity, for our knowing and loving and culture-making, and for all the earth.”

The Fall “makes so much else understandable—in particular, our persistent brokenness and the world's deep pain.”

The cause of the Fall, according to Genesis 3, are

• The human temptation to believe the serpent/Satan’s aspersions on God's character, suggesting subtly that God is stingy with his provisions.
• The human temptation to rebel against God’s sovereignty in order to be “gods” ourselves, that is, autonomous beings, doing our own thing, living in freedom as we please.

Naugle points out that the consequences of the Fall came in the form of four separations and three curses.

“First, human beings are separated from God (3:8-9)…”
“Second, human beings are separated from or within themselves (3:10)… Fear, shame and guilt have shattered the previous sense of wholeness and well-being. The line dividing good and evil will cut through the heart of every human being, as Solzhenitsyn has noted.”
“Third, human beings are separated from each other (3:11-13)…”

“At this point in the narrative, God announces a series of curses upon the serpent, whose humiliating "dust-eating" defeat is prophesied; upon the woman, who will struggle mightily as mother and wife; and upon the man, who must sweat profusely in order to have dominion over the earth. Then we die.”

“Once these three judgments are administered, a final separation is described at the end of Genesis 3. God drives the first human pair from the Garden, and stations an angelic battalion at its east entrance to prevent them from reentering it again (3:20- 24). We traded the bounty and blessing of Eden for the chaos and confusion of a broken world. Ever since, we have sought to get our happiness back by our own "utopian" efforts, whether individualistically or collectively.”

That is “the Fall.” The next chapter is “Redemption,” which will be my next post, reflecting on Jamie Smith’s thoughts on it.

Naugle gives a hint of what is to come:

“Only God and his kingdom can fill the longings of the heart. Life without God is vain and futile.”

Posts in this series on WORLDVIEW REVISITED:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Wonder, Heartbreak, Hope
For more on this Reformational Worldview, see my web resource,
Friend of Kuyper

Is Jesus "a third way"?

Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola have written a new book, Jesus Manifesto: It's Time to Restore the Supremacy of Jesus Christ (Thomas Nelson). An article based on the opening chapter of the book appeared over at Emergent Village. I have really enjoyed Len Sweet's books and Frank Viola's blog (Sweet's book, Out of the Question...Into the Mystery: Getting Lost in the GodLife Relationship is still one of my favorites).

But I'm wondering something: Exactly who needs to "restore the supremacy of Jesus Christ?" Sweet and Viola state,

__"The body of Christ is at a crossroads right now. The two common alternatives are to move either to the left or the right. It’s our observation, however, that we are living in a unique time, when people are frozen as they look in either of those directions. When they look to the left, they decide that they cannot venture there. When they look to the right, they feel the same. Whether they realize it or not, people are looking for a fresh alternative—a third way.
__"The crossroads today, we believe, is one of moving forward or backward. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is that third way—and the only way—that we can forge a secure path into the future. If the church does not reorient and become Christological at its core, any steps taken will be backwards."

Certainly, "those on the left" had lost their Christology. But had "those on the right?" This notion of focusing on the supremacy of Jesus Christ may be revolutionary for those in the emergent crowd that come from the liberal left end of American Christianity, but these words are nothing new to those on the right.

There's nothing revolutionary about this manifesto that I see. For 2000+ years, the true church of Jesus Christ has been primarily marked by the statement that Sweet and Viola say is their "Jesus Manifesto:"

"What is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less."

Certainly those "on the left" that lost this in the past 100 years need to hear it afresh. And I praise God that Sweet and Viola have their ears.

But those "on the right"?

CREATION: Worldview Revisited

Al Wolters gives us fresh insight into CREATION > FALL > REDEMPTION with his recent article in Comment.

In much of Christianity, there is affirmation of the glory of Creation. The wonder of a sunset - or a mountain range, or a blooming flower, or the depth of the stars in the sky, or the birth of a baby - all makes us go, “Wow! God is incredible!”

But the Neocalvinist tradition takes this wonder of the glory of God’s creation to the next and best level: As Wolters writes, “Creation is conceived of in a particularly comprehensive way, and even salvation is in large measure understood as the retrieval of creation as God originally intended it. Creation is foundational to everything. Moreover, creation is good in a deep and primordial sense— so deep, in fact, that the goodness of creation continues to manifest itself even in the midst of terrible perversion.”

The Creation-Fall-Redemption story as understood by Kuyperians is more nuanced that that of other Christians, including other Calvinists (for more on the differences between Neo-Calvinism and Neo-Puritanism, see this previous post).

According to Wolters,

“Unlike other understandings of orthodox Christianity, this vein of the tradition does not see redemption as something pitted against creation (as in dialectical theology), or as supplementing and fulfilling it (as in some understandings of Thomism), or as standing alongside it without intrinsic connection (as in various two-realm theories), but rather as renewing and restoring it. Thus creation, embodying God's intention from the beginning, is the very goal of salvation in Christ. The whole point of redemption is to restore life and the world to the way they were meant to be from the beginning. Salvation means re-creation; grace restores nature.”

If you haven’t read Wolter’s essential book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, stop everything right now and order this book! This is one of the best articulations of the Neo-Calvinist understanding of Creation-Fall-Redemption.

Wolter's recent article in Comment underlines that when those in the Neo-Calvinist (or “Kuyperian”) tradition speak of “Creation,” we don’t just mean the “natural world” (that is, the physical and biological world). We have a more all-encompassing view of God’s good creation –

“In the biblical view, creation is everything which God has ordained to exist, what he has put in place as part of his creative workmanship… Creation includes such human realities as families and other social institutions, the presence of beauty in the world, the ability to appreciate that beauty, the phenomena of tenderness and laughter, the capacity to conceptualize and reason, the experience of joy and the sense of justice. An almost unimaginable variety of objects, institutions, relationships and phenomena are part of the rich texture of God's creation.”

Since “Creation” encompasses all things, then God’s order for these things has been in place since the beginning. In other words, the sovereign king has put into place his “creational law” for everything that is.

The next two chapters of the story, of course, are “Fall” and “Redemption” (which we'll cover in our next two blog posts). And these relate directly to this all-encompassing view of the good creation. Wolters writes,

“It is difficult—in fact, impossible—to speak of creation as a Christian in abstraction from the two other fundamental categories of the biblical story: sin and salvation. Sin means the distortion of creation, and salvation its recovery in Christ. This means that creation comes back with a vengeance (so to speak) in the redeemed Christian life. It is in the richly textured glory of created human life, in which mothers sing lullabies to their babies, and children run for the sheer joy of going fast, that God wants to be glorified by our service and witness to him, so that all the world can see what true created human life is like, despite the scars and scourge of sin and death. That applies to our moviegoing and our moviemaking, to our parties and our philosophizing, to our imagination and our determination.”

Posts in this series on WORLDVIEW REVISITED:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Wonder, Heartbreak, Hope
For more on this Reformational Worldview, see my web resource,
Friend of Kuyper

Wonder, Heartbreak, Hope: Worldview Revisited

Comment Magazine has published a series of articles revisiting and re-articulating the biblical worldview storyline of “Creation, Fall, Redemption.” In the next series of posts, I will highlight and discuss the insights of the authors as they attempt to reinvigorate the imaginations of Christians with the amazing story of God. The authors of the articles are three of my favorite Christian theologians: Al Wolters, David Naugle, and James K.A. Smith.

Gideon Strauss, president of the Center for Public Justice and editor of Comment for Cardus, starts us off with three new descriptive words for C-F-R. Check out the article here: 2010 Comment Manifesto: Wonder, Heartbreak and Hope. Below are some excerpts.

Wonder
The Word and the Spirit of God open our eyes to the wonder of the world God made… Creation is not just nature, but encompasses the God-ordained structure of all of human life and all the things in the world…

With eyes of wonder we can see the diversity and complexity of creation accurately and correctly… We begin to discern the pattern of God's creation, and begin to learn the wisdom of caring for things as they are, neither neglecting nor exploiting their structured possibilities, but rather disclosing their meaning as creatures made and loved by God.

Heartbreak
Our dulled tastes, our self-interested arguments, the entanglement of our identity with our consumption, our failures to cultivate expertise, our subtle slights of others and our seeking after status at the cost of justice… all of life (has) fallen away from enjoyment of the good and obscuring the wonder evoked by a good creation.

With broken hearts we confess our own complicity in the vandalizing of God's good and peaceable order. We admit to our own idolatrous love of God's creatures and their diverse qualities: power and fame, sex and wealth, nature and community not least among these. We confess that we seek to shape things into forms foreign to their created purposes, and that we through lack of imagination and enterprise allow things to lie undiscovered and unenjoyed.

As thoroughly as God's good design suffuses all that is not God, so thoroughly does human evil mar all things… The Word and the Spirit of God open our eyes to the heartbreak suffered by the world God made, and mindful of God's pain we find our own hearts broken.

Hope
We…yearn for the full recovery of the peace of God, desire the complete restoration of the reign of God, and await the fulfillment of the promises of God.

Our hearts burning with hope, we rejoice in the good news of the cross and resurrection of Christ and the promise of forgiveness and of the resurrection of our bodies and the reconciliation of all things with God. We celebrate the good things, great and small, that are foretastes of the coming kingdom.

As wide as the sorrows of humanity, as deep as the rifts between human and human, as high as the walls that prevent all God's creatures from fulfilling their intended purposes, so wide and deep and high reaches the redemptive work of God in Christ.



Posts in this series on WORLDVIEW REVISITED:
Creation
Fall
Redemption
Wonder, Heartbreak, Hope
For more on this Reformational Worldview, see my web resource,
Friend of Kuyper

Think Orange Review Project

Frequent commenter to Vanguard Church, Henry Zonio (of the excellent on-line resource, Elemental Children's Ministry) did a blogging project on Reggie Joiner’s book Think Orange: Imagine the Impact When Church and Family Collide. Several elementary children's ministers contributed their interactions to the chapters of the book.

Thanks for organizing this Henry!

Here are the links to the contributions:

Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Conclusion