Jesus and God

When mr pastasmissus was applying to train as a pastor, he had to fill out some rather detailed forms. One of them asked for "short notes explaining your understanding of..." There was then enough space for about 3 sentences. The things they wanted you to explain included "the trinity".
We had some fun with that. My initial suggestion of "God is 3 and God is 1, and, no, I don't understand that either" may have been honest but was dismissed as not quite having the right tone. So I tried again "the tripartite unity of the Godhead is a paradox beyond human comprehension". That got dismissed as too pretentious!
I am always intrigued by how different people see God. For me, Jesus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit have always been quite distinct. That's not saying I think they're separate, just that I react and interact slightly differently to each. And it's different again for God the trinity.
A consequence of this is that I am very careful when I pray, to know who I am addressing. I know that many other people I have spoken to about this can't understand why it matters - after all, it's all the same God. (Although, oddly enough, if you then suggest praying to the Holy Spirit, the same people often get very upset and start telling you why this is wrong - and the comment "it's all the same God" does NOT go down well ;-) ) But it does mean I have a mental disconnect when I hear communion prayers that start off "Father God" and then say "thankyou for dying on the cross" - I want to stand up and shout that he didn't....
It probably all stems from the image of God I had as a child - the critical parent/ teacher in the sky, who was big and scary and powerful, sitting on a cloud, armed with thunderbolts, just waiting to zap me if I did something wrong. Jesus, in contrast, was much more approachable, and on the side of the victims. At that stage the Holy Spirit was a rather unknown concept (never mind person). I'm not saying this is good theology, it's just where I started from.
When I hit problems with my faith, it all got blamed on God the Father. He was the one who could have stopped stuff from happening, but hadn't. Therefore He was the bad guy. I couldn't do that to Jesus - he had already suffered so much, I didn't want to add to it. And anyway, he knew what it was like to feel helpless and abandoned and let down by God. So even when I was having major issues with 'God', I was still committed to Jesus.
My understanding of God has changed alot since then and has become more integrated. But I am still very careful with who I am addressing when I pray.

Why do I still follow Jesus?

So why do I still follow Jesus, if it makes my life more difficult?
There are alot of different reasons.
The main one is the same reason I started following Jesus in the first place: I couldn't come up with a convincing alternative to the resurrection. So if Jesus rose from the dead, then I had to take the rest of what he said seriously too. That meant believing in God (which I didn't want to....) and recognising that Jesus says to people "Come and follow me". Which I chose to do about 25 years ago.
Since then I've fallen in love with Jesus, hated God, been scared by God, ignored God completely, resented God, argued with God, and tried to break up with him (I couldn't).

For me, it really does all come down to Jesus. How could God love me (when I was hating him) enough to leave his nice cushy number in heaven and become a baby? I mean, why not come as an adult? - at least you would have bowel control... And then living a life where your friends don't understand you, the people who should help undermine you, and in the end a friend betrays you and dying horribly alone... And all the time, having the power to stop it from happening.
I think that is the most awesome bit - that Jesus had the power to stop it, but chose not to.
I can't turn my back on that - it calls to something deep within me.
So there's an element of 'if Jesus loves me enough to do that, then I love him back' - not as an obligation, but as an emotional reality.

In terms of following Jesus making life easy - oddly enough, I don't ever see Jesus saying that in the Bible. He actually tells people to be prepared to give up everything for him, and if they're not prepared to do that then not to bother. (Luke 9:57-62 Luke 14:25-33 Luke 18:18-29). He also tells them to expect trouble because of their faith (John 15:18-16:4) and not to be surprised when it happens. To me that sounds rather different to "come to Jesus and all your problems will be over".

holiday theology

The theology digressed a bit onto chocolate theology - something which I think would bear closer examination (and sampling!) - and yes, Angela, I'd be up for a joint project ;-)
So going back to the original post: while on holiday I read "Christus Victor" by vonAulen. I'm not sure I understood all of it, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong...
Basically what I got from it is that the idea of atonement has different interpretations; and penal substitution, although very influential in Western thought actually did not occur as that concept in the early church or the Patristic period. In fact, the idea of penal substitution came out of discussing the sacrament of penance - if someone good did lots of penance then they could accrue extra Brownie points, which God could then transfer to someone else. So Jesus dying on the cross accrues megaBrownie points which can then get transferred to our account, wiping out what we owe God. It's an extremely forensic view of God, who seems to delight in keeping lists of every individual thing we do wrong, and who will only wipe it out if someone pays for it (in blood).
I've always had an issue with this, as for me it's very difficult to reconcile this image of God with the idea that God is love. But I never knew that it was rooted in the doctrine of penance, especially as developed by Anselm.
VonAulen says that this view of the atonement is too narrow in scope. Jesus dies for my sins. Yes, that is true. But in this model, only the fact that Jesus dies is significant. So why come as a baby? Why wait 30 years to start preaching? Why get raised from the dead? And yes, he dies for my sins, but is it only humanity that needs to be redeeemed? And using the idea of God having a list - Jesus might die to wipe the contents of the list off, but does that do anything to change my underlying sinfulness???
His view, which he says is that of the early church (and is still that of the Eastern Orthodox church) is that the atonement is God acting to reconcile all creation to himself, despite the best efforts of Satan. Christ lives life the way Adam should have (and didn't). By doing this, the result was that the evil which opposed him finally over-reached itself and claimed his life, although in reality it had no claim on him. Consequently Jesus broke the power of sin, death, hell and the grave. This reconciles creation to the creator and gives the possibility of a new way of being.

It made alot of sense to me, particularly in view of our recent issues. I had been feeling that the things that had been said about my husband were personal, and had been deeply hurt by them. However, this changed my perspective to see that all of creation is caught up in a cosmic war between God and evil and we simply have to decide which side we are on. In our church mess, hubby and I tried to do what we thought God wanted. Eventually, the evil present came to light. Unfortunately, we paid the price for doing the right thing. But what does it profit a man (or woman) to gain the whole world but lose their soul?

chocolate theology 2

I used to go to a church where the pastor's favourite verse was "The Lord delights in fatness".
I still remember him preaching a sermon about God's love, and one of his illustrations involved Kit-Kats. He described in great detail the process of unwrapping it, snapping it and biting into it - only to discover it was SOLID CHOCOLATE. There had been a 'happy accident' and somehow the biscuit had not made it into the Kit-Kat. And God's love was solid all the way through, but unlike the Kit-kat, it wasn't a happy accident, it was meant to be like that....

Just another random thought as to why God is like chocolate - I think it was T S Elliot who said that mankind could not bear too much reality. We can't cope with too much exposure to God - much prefer the watered down version as being more palatable. Me, I like the British chocolate that the Europeans don't think is chocolatey enough to count as 'chocolate'. I once made the mistake of getting some 90% chocolate and put 4 pieces in my mouth at once (yes, this is the way I usually eat chocolate!). I couldn't speak for quite some time, and suddenly understood why chocolate was seen as a dangerous stimulant when it first appeared. It was rather different to what I thought chocolate was.....

chocolate theology

Sorry to anyone waiting for the actual theology I read on holiday - this is a digression. Yesterday was not a particularly good day for me. It is extremely strange being in a church where I don't know anyone and have nothing to do, and the preacher isn't my husband. It WAS nice having him sitting next to me and passing tissues over at appropriate intervals...
So I spent the evening cheering myself up by overcoming the gates of hell. For the uninitiated, this means eating Toblerone chocolate...
This stems from a remark I made at a Bible study about how I had been very confused by an ikon I'd seen in Greek Orthodox churches in which Jesus seemed to be standing on two Toblerone bars. It took me a while to realise the two yellow things near the base of the ikon are actually the gates of hell!

I hope that might encourage some of you to do the same ;-)

a sense of place

Having been in a church which has not had a building for 20 years, the idea of place being important is not particularly familiar. But being away from here and physically in a different place has helped alot. Somehow I now have a bit of distance from the things that have happened, and the overwhelming engulfing pain has settled into something much more manageable. That's not to say I'm happy about what happened. I'm not, and I'm still working out what (if anything) to do about it. I still get upset at times, but at least I'm now functional and even managed OK back at work.
I also got chance to read some theology while away - yes, I do read theology for fun! - mr pastasmissus used to get quite annoyed by me 'borrowing' his books when he was at college - but more of that next time.