Relationships

It dawned on me that relationships with people are the single most fulfilling and most wonderful thing in my life. I absolutely love the people i'm around, i call them my people.

Anyway I have been listening to The Shack by William Young, and it talks about all kinds of relationships, even the relationship between the Trinity. though I haven't yet figured out if i fully agree with everything it says about the equality of the roles they play, I do agree that they have perfect fulfillment within that relationship. That is, for all eternity before creation they existed together. All power spread between three unique persons in one being without limits and without the lack of perfect goodness.

Our existence came into being so we can choose to enter into that relationship. So, our whole entire existence, is, for the sole purpose of relating! To me, this is just totally mind bending. Our whole world and all we do in it is possible so we can choose between relating with God or not. Granted relating with God takes many forms, many of which i'm sure i'll never understand.

I'll admit, i never really focused on visualizing how the relationship would actually be within the trinity. It never occured to me to think about it. The Bible make it clear that it and a whole bunch of other stuff is way beyond the scope of any human imagination, so this story only expands what i can consider about it. I find this story so amazing simply because i have never considered anything like this before.

The story suggest the relationship is childlike, yet whole in perfect wisedom and respect. I like that! Thinking about it makes me want to partake in something like that. From what I know of the character of God, it'll be so exciting and wonderful. It'll be exactly perfect!

My point in writing this is this, I wanna draw closer toward perfection in my relationships with people around me now. This, of course requires my relationship with God to thrive and flourish. We even have an active example, God, and the other two of the One loves each of us perfectly right now. Just think, no embarassment, no awkwardness, no fear, no agendas no comparison or pain. Just relation out of naked love for another being. I feel a pull towards this kind of existance, this is my heart's desire. I think we can get a whole lot closer to this kind of relating with eachother! I think this is all very possible, just as possible as my survival of the accident, or the next breath you're gonna take. Anything is possible through Christ who strengthens me Philippians 4:13

God is good!

Comments

  1. -TiffanyFebruary 18, 2009 at 4:40 PM

    Nicely put Jonathan!

    ReplyDelete
  2. TimmeryFebruary 18, 2009 at 9:31 PM

    Hey Jonathan-
    I read "The Shack" too, a couple times actually. I found oh-so appealing the way the relationships were described in the book. Even if some of the things might have been questionable, I still found myself very drawn to the relationship aspect of the Trinity depicted there. As I read it, it made me evaluate the current state of my relationship with God and challenged me to make a few changes. I like that it prodded me forward to take my relationship with God to the next level. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Good stuff, Dunky!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dan VanFebruary 19, 2009 at 10:31 AM

    for all you shack lovers... Bethel is hosting a event called "Shack Chat" http://www.bethel.edu/church-ministries/events/shack/

    I am guessing that you guys would like it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Leah ZanzucchiJuly 7, 2013 at 11:25 AM

    Having better honest relationships with people is always a good thing. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Motivation for studying theology

You know when you meet someone new and you totally jive with them. You want to ask them a million questions because you just met your new close friend. You can't wait to spend time getting to know them and could easily spend hours talking with them. You end up with quite a large collection of facts about them, but more importantly, you feel like you kinda know who they are to some degree. Over the course of getting to know them maybe your initial assumptions were proved wrong and you're all the happier for it. You find yourself trying to adapt their best qualities into your life thereby enriching yourself through them. I submit that studying theology could be, even should be like that. The pursuit of theology has a very different feel than sitting with your new friend, but why? I think the motivation behind it is key. If you like a person and simply want to know more about them, you have a natural hunger for knowledge, but also, experience. You want to experience things with th...
Read more

Acceptance?

This entry is not a thought or idea i'm putting forth to be adopted or critiqued. This is a window into my struggles. I'm not pretending i got the perfect perspective or that my views are correct, this is possibly my most bitter longest standing battle.I'm writing this for two reasons, to gain a new perspective on my own situation. Also maybe such a struggle will glorify God, because ultimately he'll be the solution. In theory acceptance is super simple, it's just the acknowledgement of something. Ideally negative feeling will subside and just kinda go away. Well I woke up today and among the intelligible sludge of pre-coffee thoughts was this nagging sense that i still haven't accepted my disability. It's a super annoying feeling of emotional dissonance, two things in opposition to each other. One is this hopeful excitement for all the future possibilities coupled with a waxing and waning stubbornness. The other is this acute sense of limitations defiantly ...
Read more

Security of faith

I love science, it really jives well with my OCD, and who doesn't have a touch of OCD these days? Pure science is a logical process applied to something for the purpose of uncovering an unbiased truism. The truth can then be tested in every conceivable way and become well defined. Then you really got something! Science, in its innocence, is a beautiful thing and is to be aspired to. Unfortunately people can be better at the logical process than others, and so ensues the bitter sweet power struggle. Which brings all the fun of politics careening into the pursuit of truth. When people start lying about stuff and you get a bunch of people to agree to lie too, you have the monstrosity of popular science. Charismatic scientist can leverage their findings against ideas they deem offensive. Science and logic, like everything else, can be twisted into weapons to oppress. I thought too highly of science coming out of high school. I had my faith, which i could defend logically fair decently....
Read more