Karl updated us on a few friends in our community:
- Steve and Lara got married!
- Darrin and Jolene recently returned from Ethiopia with their new kids! They are currently trying to get the family healthy upon returning with a few small, treatable medical issues.
- Heather is recovering well from surgery, but goes back to school this week and could use our support and prayers.
Then... we jumped right back in to the concept of wholeness!
Wholeness is not something we will ever have a complete understanding of; our understanding of it is changeable and different at different points in our lives. Our goal then, is to try to get as close to understanding and achieving it as possible.
Karl shared with us a goal of his: to offer a different framework for answering the question, "What's the point of God?"
He compared the search for wholeness with using a GPS. If you know the exact destination, you plug it in, and the GPS will get you there. However, if you're not quite sure of your destination or it's coordinates, it can be a frustrating journey trying to arrive at the right place. So it's important for us to evaluate our coordinates now and then and make sure we've got them right.
In the spirit of re-evaluation, let's take a fresh look at this thing called salvation.
What is Salvation?
Many of us have been taught that the concept of salvation is explained with: Fall and Redemption. This, however, is a limited view of the picture of salvation. Karl offered a different view that looks a bit more like this:
Creation
If we view salvation from the beginning, starting with creation, this journey towards wholeness makes a lot more sense.
- Genesis 1:26-27
- Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God set things up from the beginning for us to reflect His image, to look like Him, to be like Him. Sometimes, when we feel a disconnect, discontentment, or longing, it can be a subconscious realization that something's not right. If we're created in God's image, the potential is there; the coordinates are there; we just have to rediscover them.
- Genesis 1:31
- God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
God looked at our original setting and said that all of it was "very good." How then, have we come to the conclusion that all of us are inherently evil? Created in God's image, called not just good, but "very good" by God, and yet, inherently evil? That doesn't really seem to be a logical conclusion. Maybe, just maybe, it's time we looked at things a little differently....
- Genesis 2:25
- Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
People, at their original, and at their best: no fear, no shame, no need to hide. Another way to say it: whole.
Fall
Now, after Creation, which here we are assuming is actually the beginning of this salvation process, we see what is typically labeled by Bible chapter headings "The Fall." Thinking differently about this passage than most of us were probably taught, let's see what it's like if we view it this way: Eve is confronted with an alternate reality than what she knows and trusts. She isn't choosing what's bad because it's bad, or because she's selfish or inherently evil. What if, when the serpent offers a different reality, she's just trying to decide if the reality that she has known is good for us, or if what the serpent's laying out is better?
- Genesis 3:1-5
- Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Here, we see Eve battling with the question of which reality she's going to believe. Note that her observations, and the elements that factor into her decision are good things: good for food, pleasing to the eye, desirable for gaining wisdom. Maybe her intentions are good, after all...
- Genesis 3:6-7
- When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Now, unfortunately, Adam and Eve are confronted with the fact that their decisions weren't actually the best choices to make. Now, things are broken. Now something is not right.
- Genesis 3:8-10
- Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
This is the classic example of the lack of wholeness: "I was afraid." There are parts about me that I'm ashamed of. There are parts about God that I'm afraid of. I feel the need to hide. I'm fearful and ashamed. This is where the wholeness we've been talking about gets disrupted.
Enter: the need for redemption.
Redemption
Redemption is atonement, forgiveness, the universal need we have to reconnect with God. So God makes a way for us to reconnect by Jesus' sacrifice.
We've typically learned to stop there. Blam! The sin is atoned for! But you and I both know that it doesn't fix everything. Things are not right again just because of the atonement. The potential exists now... there's a way... now what?
That's where restoration comes in.
Restoration
Restoration is a movement, a process, a journey that starts at the cross and heads where? Let's figure that out...
Once we participate in the event of atonement or redemption, we begin on the journey of restoration that has now been made possible. But restoration to what? How about, to the original "very good" plan God had for us?
God's intent for us is shalom: wholeness. We see that in the way He created us. We see it referred back to so many times, like in this well-known passage:
- Jeremiah 29:11
- For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
The word "prosper" here, is the word "shalom." Plans to bring you back to wholeness.
So, what's the point?
It is not to systematically eliminate our sin so God will be increasingly pleased with us and so we can grow continually closer to Him.
What is it then?
The point is to receive and embrace God's love, and in so doing, rediscover the image of God initially formed in us. (This might actually be as simple as loving God and loving my neighbor....) If we get love right (understanding God's love for us, and extending as much love as possible to God and others), we may get very close the picture of wholeness.
Some closing thoughts on wholeness:
- The journey towards wholeness as an individual is an individual journey in that the path for each person is different.
- Wholeness cannot be embraced without community (evidenced by the fact that we were created in community).
- The journey towards wholeness as a community is not a shared path. It is however, a shared experience.
- On our journey together, we should embrace each other with kindness and tolerance reflecting the image of our Creator who's kindness brings us to repentance.
We'll talk more about that repentance in next week's blog!
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