Practicing the Trinity

If I told you I spoke perfect English, you might be inclined to believe me. If, and only if, every word and statement I spoke followed a precise and perfect sounding diction, or at least as far as you understood perfection of the English language. As long as you never heard me speak otherwise, you might be inclined to believe me. If I built on this perfection expectation of yours, claiming my own heritage of English as the perfect definition of the language, claiming it was part of a geographic region you shared in, you might believe me. If we then heard people within our geographic region speaking errantly, you might start to doubt me, but if I rationalized that certain people within our wider area did not understand the true beauty and perfection of the English you and I share, and shrank our region by a fraction, you might still believe me. In fact you might believe me, even though I continued to shrink the region of perfect English, until it only contained a few perfect specimens, as long as you and I were included in that group. As I long as I maintained that you and I remained in the perfect group, you might never doubt my words. As long as I maintained that you and I had a special place in the world, you would want to believe me because you would have been included. But if I outright claimed that only Americans from Vancouver, Washington living in Hazel Dell spoke perfect English you’d call me crazy and rightly so. Unless you were from Hazel Dell. You’d want to believe what I said is true.

The truth about language and Christianity is that there’s no such thing as perfection, only time-worn practice and clear standards. Just as the English language has grammatical rules defining coherent thought, vocabulary and diction, so too does Christianity have its own formative standards. There is a defined standard of what is and what is not Christian. But what is that standard? What sits at the core of Christianity? Is it Jesus? The Bible? Community? A geographic location? A culture? Is it possible that it is all of these things, and yet none of them? For the past several years I’ve been asking myself these questions, “What sits at the core of Christianity that defines the rest of its practice? What is the least reducible part upon which to build the rest? Once we find that irreducible part how does it change and challenge us to live as Christians?” At University I tried to find the answer through research and history. In my years outside the classroom I’ve been watching Christians of various kinds, looking at what they practice, not just what they preach. It is here in the reality of the conflict between Word and People I’ve found my answer. The answer has always been with us. From the first chapters of Genesis to the last words of Revelation, it’s always been there. It’s just taken me twenty-five years to see it and understand it impacts every aspect of what Christians believe and practice. It has also taken the study of Christian history for me to see it at work on a grand scale, to see how this one thing has been used to correct the Church in its darkest hours, bringing light to dark situations, which is still the desire of Christians today. This single thing is the Trinity: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The first thing I notice about my singular statement is that it’s not just a plural, it’s a triple. The Trinity is one thing. Even though the Trinity is technically not a thing at all, it’s a someone. Or perhaps it would be better to explain that the Trinity, AKA God,  is so unlike all other things and someones we know that God is hard to define, not because we haven’t tried hard enough, but because our language and thoughts are insufficient to describe something that is not definable. We cannot fully contain God with our words, that is why God is undefinable, yet knowable. We have enough descriptions to know who God is and who God is not. Although we may not be able to completely and separately define all aspects of the Trinity, we can describe the three basic parts, learning much about who God is and how we practice who God is in the process. Recognizing that God is greater than we are is the first step on this path, that we cannot change who God is, but He can change who we are. Our natural resistance to the nature of God is that we want him to be like us, which is understandable, and why the Trinity includes God becoming like us. God gave us a complete description of Himself in the person of Jesus, or at least a description we can wrap our minds around.

Jesus is God. Let me say that again. Jesus is God. Jesus is not like God, Jesus is God. This is what Jesus claimed about himself. Not that he was a firstborn, or the first child, or some other kind of offspring, but fully God incarnate. When the Bible calls Jesus the Son of God, it means Jesus is the inheritor of the throne, which means Jesus is of the Father and is the Father. In Greco-Roman culture only a Son can inherit, and only a Son which is fully and legitimately of the Father. Which means that Jesus, although fully human, is fully God. I say is, because as fully God Jesus is alive. God made himself a man to bear the sin of humanity. As we read in the Law only perfection can atone for imperfection. Imperfection is sin. As such the reason God became man was to redeem humanity: to heal our imperfection. The life of Jesus shows us how to live out the Law. The purpose of the Law is to show us what is good and right, and the fulfillment of the Law is Jesus: the redemption and healing of broken humanity. The life of Jesus shows us that there are some things only God can do, and as hard as we may try unless God works on our behalf, which He has, we will always come up short. This shortness is coming up short of the way God designed creation to be. Good. The design of creation by the Creator is good. The reality is that all of creation is no longer good, but broken. This brokenness can be restored through Jesus and living out the fullness of God’s Law. This is the living example we see in Jesus, and the living example we see practiced by those who follow him.

Where did this Law come from? For there to be a Law there has to be a Law giver. A designer, an architect, the someone who put it all together. This is God the Father. God the Father is the architect, and the best way to understand the architect is to study his designs. His greatest readable, digestible design is His Word. God the Father has authored all of creation, but it is through his Word we get an accurate picture of who He is. For in His Word we see plain descriptions and historical accounts of how God has interacted with Humanity. It is by studying His Word we come to understand who He is.

The history of God’s interaction with humanity is not limited to reading and acting out the Law, but there is another component that is necessary to understanding God. The Holy Spirit. Throughout the Word we see God interacting with humanity through raw displays of power. I say raw, because there’s something about the Holy Spirit that defies logic and reason, going beyond our religious habits and behaviors, tapping into the experiential knowledge that God is real. This is the Holy Spirit. The raw experience and presence of God. The uncooked, unaltered, unexplainable, palpable touch of God. It is only through connection to God, we see his Spirit at work. We do not have to believe in the Holy Spirit to see its effects, but those who are connected to God rightly recognize his raw power at work.

These three descriptions of God form the basis of what I believe it means to practice the Trinity. Looking over my descriptions, I still see something lacking, something I can’t put into words. There’s a fullness not present in my descriptions, not only because there’s more to God than a few short words, but because I will never be fully able to describe God. There is more to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Even as I try to write separate descriptions of the Trinity, my descriptions still bleed into one another. This is how it’s supposed to be. Even though the Trinity is a triple, it’s still a single. For was it not the Holy Spirit working through men that the Word of God became Holy Scripture and Bible? Was not Jesus an author of the dawning of creation? Does not the Father make himself manifest through Spirit and Son? On and on we could go, listing how the Trinity intertwines, informs, and enriches our definitions of each part. This is why the Trinity is a single entity: we cannot pull it apart.

How is it then, that we should practice this Trinity? If the Trinity teaches us anything about the life of a Christian, it is that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit need to be present in an inseparable way. As such there are three essential disciplines a Christian should practice. These disciplines inform each other, shape each other, and mold the person and people putting them into practice. These disciples are simple, practicable, and in their basicness ordinary, but when they work together and are practiced as part of relationship with God the results are incredible. They transform nations by transforming people by transforming persons for God’s work: the healing and redemption of humanity. For the practice of God is not just about self-actualization, but communal change, and not just communal change, but the restoration of all humanity. It’s a grand scale practice found on an individual and person-to-person level.

The practice of the Trinity comes from these three things: prayer, study of Scripture, and living in community. Studying Scripture is the practice of knowing God the Father. Prayer is the practice of knowing the Holy Spirit. Living in Community is the practice of knowing the Son. Too often we elevate one part of the Trinity over the other, instead of letting all parts of the Trinity transform us. When we neglect one of the practices of the Trinity, we lose the power of the whole thing. For without the communal practice of living out our faith, our prayers and Scripture readings become anemic. Without study of the Scripture we forget how to pray and how to live out our faith. Without prayer studying Scripture and living like Jesus lack power and purpose. We cannot pick and choose the parts of the Trinity we want to practice; we must practice the whole thing.

Looking backward through history we can see times and places where people neglected or overemphasized pieces of the Trinity. Times when the community of Christ forgot the importance of living the Word. Times when sharing and living by the Word became legalism. Times when the overemphasis of the Spirit drowned believers in unpracticeable nonsense. These historical issues, and many more just like them, are the same reasons the Church flounders today. Yet it is also because of the practice of the Trinity the Church flourishes. For while we may neglect important pieces of who God is, when we bring these things back into practice believers and churches flourish because they are rightly relating to God and practicing that relationship. This is the core of the Christian faith: practicing our relationship with God. Our practice is molded and shaped by who God is; it is when we forget who God is that we forget how to practice.

My goal for the rest of our series is to look at the persons of the Trinity, and how they shape our practice. In my next blog I will look at the practice of the Holy Spirit: prayer.

Approaching the Trinity

This week I read an article about the implosion of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. The article describes how a church movement that gathered steam over the past ten years broke and fell apart. It also describes the healing taking place, as many churches in the movement have turned away from their founding flaw, seeking renewal through confession, repentance and forgiveness. The errors of Mars Hill did not belong to one leader, Mark Driscoll, they belonged to many leaders and pastors who, believing in their own abilities to grow churches, trusted in their own ideas about growth. These ideas led them to become arrogant and hard hearted, choosing themselves and their own sense of giftedness over the love of Christ. Ultimately their arrogance was their very undoing. As they demanded more and more people get on their leadership bus, or get run over by it, many got off the bus and simply left. This caused the center of the Mars Hill network, the church Mark started in the hardest part of Seattle, the church of his pride and rise to nationwide leadership success to close it’s doors. Pride and arrogant leadership killed Mars Hill. Pride wounded many long before the physical church closed it’s doors. Many people questioned Mark and his staff about their attitude over the years, many times those asking difficult questions were ignored or labeled as too critical, that if they didn’t like what they saw they could leave. What could have been saved through early repentance was ignored and cast aside, causing the financial, social and spiritual collapse of what was once deemed a successful church.

In the wake of Mars Hill many ask, "What is it that causes churches to collapse?" I’ll never forget one of my university professors, who himself was a pastor out of inner city Seattle, taught us about the nature of ministry and what causes it to fail. He taught us this lesson by taking us to two country churches that were on the brink of closing their doors. The only thing keeping them going was his efforts as a temporary pastor. Yet he met with resistance. These churches had strongly opinionated lay leaders. Leaders who did not want to move forward, but believed that if they just kept things the way they were, and did as they always did, they would survive. These churches were old, and had history in their community. They were built by local hands. They were supported by local people. They were run by local people. If you weren’t local you couldn’t be trusted, because you might damage the history of the church, and remove the localness they prized over God’s timeless truths. These churches both closed their doors due to one reason. Pride. While at University I watched a pastor burn out with a similar prideful attitude. For too long he rested on his laurels, refused to make difficult decisions, yet came down harshly on anyone who didn’t agree with the decisions he made. He believed he could change a church through his own strength, even though he prayed many pious sounding prayers, his actions spoke more deeply of his heart than any of the words he directed to God. To say pride will close many church doors this year is an understatement. Pride kills a church long before it’s dead, and its pride that kills Christians in churches in the West. We simply believe in ourselves too much and place too little at the feet of God.

Pride is not the only killer of churches and Christians. When churches doors shut, pride isn’t always the root cause. The root of churches closing their doors has to do with taking our eyes off God. I say our eyes because it’s not always a single person’s responsibility; the community needs to look to God and have a right relationship with Him. I want to begin this writing series at the feet of God, because I know writing about God and how we practice God on a daily basis is difficult. We must ask difficult questions, not just about who God is, but about the culture in which we’ve learned about God. My intent is to ask difficult questions, and in some cases my questions will sound like heresy. Many a heretic has asked profound and difficult questions, but arrived at the wrong answers. My desire is to draw closer to God, and show how focusing on the three inseparable parts of God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we can seek guidance through difficult times, turning away from mere cultural shifts in Christianity and embrace God at all times in all places. This is what will sound like heresy. That cultural shifts and values, while being of the utmost importance when they take place, do not ultimately lead us to God, even though they focus on parts of God. For if we focus on a cultural shift more than we focus on God we have forgotten why the shift took place: to bring us back to God. My full intent is to examine cultural shifts in light of how they relate to the Trinity, how they serve their purpose for a time, and how, when misunderstood and misused, can lead us away from God. For it is not culture or any one part of the Trinity we worship. It is a timeless triune God whose truth stands accessible for all peoples of all tribes, languages, ethnicities, intellects, incomes, continents and personalities. It is this God we worship, if we only trust in our culture we fail to trust in God. We must learn to embrace what is good about culture and seek for those elements that our culture does not possess. Serving and worshipping God means being both cultural and counter-cultural. We must be careful of falling into our culture’s trap and ideas of God, for this is the very thing that brought down Mars Hill. They came to a place where the way they worshipped God with their lives was too influenced by their American values. It was not simply their American values that brought them down, but their arrogance and refusal to take up Godly values. To live as Americans wholly guided by God, not just Americans living out American values speaking about God. It is not enough for us to live out the highest ideals of our own culture, we must put on and walk out the ways of God over and above our own culture. We must do more than speak about God, God must become tangible through our actions, so that though we may not speak of who God is, God is visible in our lives through our daily conduct. It is this daily living, this day-in day-out fulfillment that should speak for us about God, the words we use should only be icing on the cake. For if we have no action behind our words, our claims of Godly living lack substance, and we too can repeat the mistakes of many who have gone before us.

 I believe how we act is as important as what we say. As my church goings have taken me across a continent, I’ve had the opportunity to observe various Christian circles. What I have observed about these groups, is that they all claim similar truths, so similar in fact that if we were to read their statements of faith they’d all look quite the same, and we might believe that they all worship the same too, but this is not true. Some do not put into practice what they believe. Though their statements may word-for-word match another Christian circle’s statements, they do not live out those words. It is here we start to see the disconnect; that some love to speak of what they know about God, yet do not practice it. It is here we see errors and mistakes in practical Christian living. If these errors consistently form practice, and are not simple slips of the tongue, they lead to sin and sin when full-blown and widespread leads to heresy. It is the acceptance of heresy that kills a church, even while it continues to proclaim orthodoxy from the pulpit.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with these ideals, for he realized the Nazis took advantage of the best of German culture and twisted it for their own evil ends. German culture is not what lead to the rise of the Nazis, it was a people who were unable to practice the values of God outside of their cultural values. Bonhoeffer saw the Nazis bend what was good towards evil, and fought against their rise to power through a right relationship and action-led practice with God. Bonhoeffer wrote and lived on uniting speech and action. He lived what he believed, because he knew words alone were not enough to stop the Nazis. The Nazis had to be confronted with action, for it was the inaction of good people that led to the atrocities of an un-German regime that was a stench to the faithful sons of the country. Bonhoeffer and many others gave their lives living against the regime, for they understood it was their lives that needed to display their beliefs; they could not get away with passive disconnected faith. Indeed this disconnect made the Nazis successful in the first place. It is our same disconnection with God that passively kills our churches, and allows evil to reign in the place of what is good. We must seek God with our lives as much we pray and study the word.

It is through this line of thinking, this emphasis on study of the word, prayer and actionable living that brings me to the Trinity. For in looking to God I realize the answer has always been in God. Not just parts of God, but in the very fiber and relationship of who God is. For if we misunderstand the Trinity, we are prone to make the mistakes of the generations of Christians who have gone before us. Not just simple mistakes, that are the result of being imperfect saints, but the major sins and heresies that have marred the faithful. For we know worshipping God perfectly is impossible, yet we must still seek to worship him rightly, accepting correction and guidance, repenting and confessing our sins so that we may be made fully whole. For following God and being Christian means at once being justified before God, yet living in a world of sin where we are still prone to make mistakes. Following God means being forgiven of our sin, yet still making the occasional mistake. I say occasional mistake, because these slips and errors are to be expected. They are not to be habitual or intentional, for if they are they are a sign of sin reigning over us, sin that needs to be confronted and healed before it can bring death and destruction as it has in the case of Mars Hill. We cannot turn from our sin unless we know God, and find confidence in who he is and how he wants us to live. It is by knowing God our sin is destroyed, fully knowing God in all aspects of our lives, not just partial worship by giving part of our lives, but putting our whole selves before him. This is a struggle, for at first we do not understand what wholly giving ourselves means and only give part of ourselves to God. It is by continually giving these parts of ourselves to God we realize the need to give our whole selves and eventually make the step into living wholly devoted to God.

This is the end to which I will write in this series, acknowledging mistakes before God in living wholly devoted to him. For no one puts all of this into practice with perfect words and actions. Nevertheless we must press forward, unafraid of error, unafraid of receiving correction, unafraid of examining our lives and unafraid of drawing closer to God. My belief in honoring and practicing the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son as the One true God leads me to confession, repentance, forgiveness, and into actionable demonstrable living calling into question the very cultures we live in and accept as holy. Culture is not Holy. God is Holy. God is above the accepted truths inherent in our societies, languages and personal lives. It is through His Holiness we begin to see truth, even though we may not understand it at first, we must press onward and learn to live by His light.

This is how I am approaching the Trinity, not with arrogance and pride, but with the realization of my deep need to understand who God is and to live His truth out. For I believe God has shown me who He is, and the faintest glimpse of my limited understanding has opened my eyes to something wonderful, powerful and life changing. I believe practicing the Trinity is key to restoring the Church. Not just our little churches, but the Church at large in Western culture. For what I will describe in the coming series is already at play. I am not describing something new, for those who seek and live out their relationship with God have been practicing the Trinity for centuries, and many are doing so now. My goal is to demonstrate this, to show times and places when practicing the Trinity corrects the church, to show how it has been used to correct the church, and how it is currently being used. By focusing on each inseparable part of the Trinity we can come to a greater understanding of who God is and how to live out His truth. The greatest issue in the West is how we live out God’s call upon our lives. It is this very question I lay before God, even as he has already given me a glimpse of the answer ahead. For I fully believe it is through God and by God we come to live out God, it is this pursuit of God that changes us, our communities, our cities, our states, our countries and our cultures. For looking back through history I see this is what the faithful have done. They have been marked by a right pursuit of God rooted in who He is: the inseparable Trinity.

Pursuing Grace

“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 9, verses 7 through 8.

The sign read “In all things at all times”. Hanging proudly over the entrance to our locker rooms, this sign reminded us on a daily basis the importance of offering everything to God, not out of guilt or compulsion, but out of love and desire. Which is a strange sign for a football team, or any sports team for that matter. There’s a negative stereotype applied to sports, that truly great teams yell and scream at each other, forcing players to give their best, instead of inviting and encouraging each other to willingly give. This mentality of giving applied to everything: getting to and from practice, practice itself, helping struggling teammates outside of practice, game days, and everything in between. The truth of what Paul wrote is that when we willingly give of ourselves we establish a community, not just a group of people who do similar things and have similar passions. No, in Paul’s worldview it’s not just about similarities and proximities, it’s about choosing to engage with the fullness of our hearts. That’s what grace is all about, fully and joyfully engaging: no law can create such grace.

The secret of grace is that it’s an invitation, not a compulsion. You can’t force someone to connect, but you can model connection and invite people to participate. Recently I’ve been a part of a group that’s tried enforcing loyalty through stricter rules. The enforcement of rules without investigation, without a compassionate hand leads to one thing: burnout. It’s tantamount to the idea that if we just worked harder life would be better. In other words, fall in line and do your part, as I think you should, and everything will be okay. The problem with this thinking is that it doesn’t engage at a personal level. Living and breathing people become cogs in a machine, a machine turned by someone else’s hand. The cogs in this machine lose their identity because they are reduced to their functions. There’s nothing more damning than losing your identity and following someone else’s rules. This machine mentality doesn’t create life, it destroys life.

I’ll never forget visiting Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This artistically designed horror is a place Hitler put many of his political prisoners and people he wanted removed. I say artistically designed, because Hitler designed the camp himself. He designed it to manipulate, control and to strip people of their identities. The first sign prisoners read entering the camp read “Arbeit Macht Frei”. In other words they were told if they just worked hard enough they could get out of the hell Hitler created. The sign was a lie, there was no freedom to be found in Sachsenhausen. The only way out was through an incinerator, but the idea of freedom was used to get the prisoners to work themselves to death. Next to the camp were factories. The prisoners literally worked to death fueling Hitler’s war. They made shoes, blankets and other textiles, with purposefully impossible KPI’s, so every month prisoners would be punished, even though there was a promise of reward. Prisoners were given uniform clothes, had their heads shaved and starved. The result was an emaciated look, even rendering the differences between genders difficult to see. Every part of the camp was watched, and visible from a central tower with the sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei”. It wasn’t enough to starve and overwork, prisoners had to know they were being watched at every point and judged constantly. Hitler purposefully created a hell on earth, staring into that hell reminds us what true life is all about and how to avoid machine-like thinking and destructive ways of life.

Hitler’s camp represents oppressive and fear-driven thinking, it is the complete opposite and enemy of living by grace. When I remind myself of the evil I saw in Sachsenhausen, I am reminded that pieces of the camp’s mentality and way of life are still present in the world today. Sachsenhausen is a concentration of evil, it models everything wrong: from reasons for work, to lack of identity, to forced oppression, to false rewards and constant judging supervision. It’s the opposite of joyfully giving, giving because you want to, giving as its own reward, giving of the uniqueness of self and being encouraged by leaders. There is a reason Paul writes so freely about grace and giving, once upon a time he lived under the oppression of law. He was once a destructive teacher: he constantly watched, set impossibly high standards, and punished those who didn’t live up to his expectations. Paul gave up the false man-made law when confronted by Christ, and incredibly became a messenger of grace. If the hardest of hearts can be changed, then any heart is capable of change.

What many people find difficult about the Christian life is that they don’t understand grace. Many give grace lip service, and mention it every now and again, but they don’t model it. They still try to live and lead through destructive thinking. True grace is patient and endures all kinds of mistakes, but it cannot be enforced; it has to be freely given. That’s the hardest part about teaching grace. It can’t be forced on people. It runs completely counter to other ways of motivating, it says, “If you don’t want to come with me I can’t make you”. It creates the option of freedom even though there is a strong desire to have others follow. Grace invites, “Come with me, willingly choose to make this your way of life. Come share in abundance.” Grace doesn’t create guilt. Grace doesn’t create shame. Grace forgives, restores and supplies the energy to live abundantly. I choose grace, because grace chose me.

As for practical living, I recognize my grace can only go so far. I need to be refreshed and reminded about God’s grace, I need to keep taking it in or else I will run out of grace. I also recognize that as grace is a choice, there must be the freedom to decline grace and its way of life. Grace reminds me not to be critical of others, to look for the hurt in someone’s life instead of strictly judging them on actions alone. Grace cannot be enforced, even though I sometimes wish it could. Man-made laws are about forcing people to do what’s right, instead of creating an atmosphere where people willingly do what’s right. Some choose law’s made by men, instead of the Law of God. God’s Law is built on grace, it has standards and outlines and defines sin, but it also recognizes that no person without the grace of God can live up to God’s standards. God’s Law recognizes our shortcomings and constantly invites us to walk deeper in grace. It is not enough to claim grace but never follow God by making it an active part of your life. We simply cannot stay as we are, for if we do we reject the grace of God because it is by his grace we are forgiven, restored, and able to live a life of grace.