When I first started this journey, I looked backward through
history to times the church declined. I asked myself simple questions: “What
went wrong?”, “How was the mistake a misunderstanding of God?”, and most
importantly “How did Christians resolve the issue and recapture what was lost?”
Christian history is exciting, for there are plenty of mistakes, plenty of
suggestions, and the foundational truth that the Church has grown and moved on!
Every time the Church stumbles, there are men and women who have stood beside
it and helped it back to it’s feet. When I look at the individual lives of
these men and women, I see a genuine love for God and I see them calling people
back to the practices of the Trinity. There is an exciting fullness and
uniqueness about each of these individuals, as many groups of Christians are
spurred forward by their lives and faith. We still see the impact of Luther,
Calvin, Wesley, Wycliffe, St. Patrick, Augustine, and many others. For their
faith stepped forward, outside traditional boundaries, and yet stepped backward
to core essentials. They brought a newness to the oldness, and recaptured what
many of their contemporaries missed. I fundamentally believe recapturing the
old in new ways will rekindle the fires of individual lives and the Church.
This will creates forward, yet backward motion. Forward as we see new
expressions of the old, backward as we see the essential truths unchanged. The
greatest of these truths is the love of God. It is from this place of loving
God that I write. In fact every time I’ve sat down to write in past four weeks
the love of God is what comes out! I have much to learn on this subject, and I’m
looking forward to seeing that love in motion.
What initially sparked my fire was the feeling I was missing
out on God. I read my Bible. I go to church. I write creatively. But I felt
something was missing. I felt the Trinity was the answer, because it is the
least reducible part of the Christian faith. It’s the core essential on which
everything else is based. Misunderstand the Trinity, and it makes it easier to
misunderstand everything else. I figured if I could better understand the
Trinity, then I might have a better understanding of God, and that
understanding would change my life. Already I’m seeing the need to work out the
love of God more than I currently do. To go beyond essential practices and into
personal applications. Before we go there, I want to share with you a simple analogy
of the Trinity.
The Trinity is the beautiful source of a colorful life, but
how can we describe the need for all three persons? When I was at University I
had an epiphany. The Trinity is like the three primary colors: essential to
painting beautiful pictures and essential to living a colorful life. For when
we paint with all the primary colors we can create a rich and balanced masterpiece.
Imagine a world where we stopped using all the primary colors in balance with
each other. We start letting our favorite colors dominate, pushing our color
scale out of balance. Our paintings would start to miss out on the beauty of
the natural world, even though we could still paint wonderful pictures. We
would miss out on the beautiful complexity and harmony of all colors working
together. Imagine we left one color out entirely. Suddenly we lose the magic of
the color wheel, abandoning two-thirds of what we could create in favor of a
single third. Our paintings, though masterfully crafted, would never reflect
the entire truth or beauty of the world around us. Now imagine we painted with
only one color: all we have left is shadows and brightness. There’s no more
richness, just stark contrast and fine detail. Painting with just one color can
be useful to illustrate a point, but continuing on without the other colors creates
a black and white world. A black and white world is empty and without color. When
the world becomes black and white we have abandoned colorful thinking. We lose
out on the colorful richness God intended for us to see and live. Instead of
having room and space to work out the talents and abilities God has given us,
we draw a line in the sand saying, “Only paintings and lives lived in this
style are acceptable before God.” God uses many styles, and many colors, as He
stays true to His word.
As I meditated on this simple analogy, I started to apply it
to the persons of the Trinity and their practices. Imagine a Christianity
without Jesus. Suddenly Christianity lacks social responsibility and
stewardship. Imagine a Christianity without the Father. Suddenly there is no
more truth and people can do whatever they feel like and still claim to be in a
right relationship with God. Imagine a Christianity without the Holy Spirit.
Suddenly there is no expression or creativity of God’s love, no sense that He
is near, still working with us and through us to communicate and show His love.
I couldn’t imagine Christianity without the Trinity. As I look at the western
world, too often we try to live out Christian lives without the fullness of God
and His love. Missing out on parts of the Trinity is an easy trap to fall into,
but it’s also an easy trap to climb out of. Christianity has social
implications, it has unalterable true values, and it’s inseparable from
individuals working out the love of God in their lives. It’s a life calling,
something we continue to act out and grow in on a daily basis. Living out
Christianity is more than religious action or attendance, it’s individual
ownership and interaction with God, a communal force of love centered change
that cannot be kept to itself, and the desire to see God’s love poured out and
palpable in every aspect of life. This is the application of the Trinity.
Anything less is to miss out on the fullness of God and His love for us.
That’s why the Trinity is so important to me. It’s a basic
description of Christian values going back generations. It has taken me much
looking backward and at present times to see these simple unchangeable parts,
and how they change and inform those who seek to live Christian lives. To see
how the Trinity has redeemed Christianity again and again, and will continue to
save and redeem Christianity until the end of time. I firmly believe the
practices of the Trinity are not new, nor are the Trinity’s applications. One
doesn’t even have to call it a practice or application of the Trinity to live
the Trinity out. Thousands of generations of Christians have felt the call of
God on their lives, and made that call real. I want to do the same, and I want
to do it by looking at the love of God and how it casts out fear, for I believe
one of the most destructive forces against living out the Trinity is fear. In
the next few weeks I am going to look at how fear has clouds the practices and
applications of the Trinity, and how by identifying our fears we can learn to
separate ourselves from them and return to the love God deeply desires for us.
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