What in the world is God up to?
Conflict is a key ingredient in our world. It has been since Cain killed Abel. It continues.
It is difficult to bridge the diverse realities that compose the human race. We are different. We share the same space, but we do not share the same mind, the same values, or the same reality.
So why doesn’t God deal with this division and the resulting conflict? Why does He not, with the wave of His hand, calm the storm of personal, political and religious conflict? Why does He not make the ultimate reality so clear and plane that we can all ascribe to it.
Well, He did! Yes, He did!
The infinite Creator God, divested Himself of his transcendence and came to live among us, to display His love, His power and His reality. He experienced that which is human that we might experience that which is divine. He became man that we might become like Him, with Him and through Him.
The tragedy is that we fail to appropriate that which He provided. The goodness of God has been provided. It is ours to receive, to delight in and to live in. That which Jesus was and did, is available for us to be and to do.
1 Corinthians 2:16 - for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
It is in this reality that we are invited to come and to live and to become. It is not by human debate but by simple faith. It is received not achieved. It is a state of being not a denominational statement. It is the realization of where He is – in me, not an external debate in human contrasts.
I am not fond of the contrasts and conflict in our world or in our church communities. Christianity is not about who is right and has the proper doctrinal statement. It is about He who lives in us and empowers us and who is the presence of the infinite and eternal Creator God.
Which church is right? The question betrays a focus on our carnal orientation. We are not called to be right but to be real – to not construct security in our selves but in Him.
God is infinite. That is, He transcends human knowledge and is far more than we can think or imagine, and then some. Our task is not to dissect God and categorize Him and to present information about Him, but to know Him and the power of His resurrection – in us and with us.
Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’