What is the good news?

here is my summary of the "good news"…

Hot Damn! God is not what they have been telling us.  God is not some angry cosmic ruler out to punish us to eternal damnation if we are not part of some chosen group and we don’t have to solve a secret ancient riddle to know God.  God is not the cause of natural disasters and horrible wars. Instead “God” is the emotion that results when we love people without selfish conditions.  “God” is the community that results from living in this love.  The good news is that we don’t have to stress out with guilt for all the crap we have done, but instead we get to follow the message of Jesus and become transformed into loving people.  The good news is Jesus’ dream of what the universe can be if we all learn to love unconditionally.  The best part of the good news is that when we begin to live and love in this way all the heartaches of the world will disappear and we will live in peaceful communities and the universe will be healed and restored.  The more people that buy into this way of life the less cruelty and war we will have and the abuse of power will disappear as it spreads from community to community and nation to nation.

It’s great news!  The creator of the universe loves us and wants to have a relationship with us.  Jesus of Nazareth has made it possible for us to be reconciled with God and to become the kind of people God enjoys as friends, not because we’re so great ourselves, but because of his love for us in the first place.  If we want to opt in, if we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus’ direction, if we acknowledge him as our king and undergo the initiation rite, we become citizens of his kingdom!

This crap starts sounding pretty gay doesn’t it?  Maybe there isn’t any good news.

You probably just stumbled onto the answer.  The good news depends on who you are.  Jesus showed us that salvation depends on who you are becasue different people need salvation from different things.  For some people salvation was "sell all you have and give it to the poor".  For others it was "go and sin no more".   For some it was physical or mental healing and for some it was political/social justice. Jesus recognized that all of us need salvation from different things.  The good news is that there is help through some sort of transformation process and it can be found in the the message of Jesus.

It is clear to me that anytime someone asked Jesus about "salvation" or "heaven" or "the answer", he seemed to look deep inside at their needs and tailor his help to fit their particular issues.  For the last 2000+ years we have been trying to find a single mold for salvation, but that isn’t how Jesus did it.  Maybe instead of forcing our answer on peopel we should spend more time listening to the needs of others.

The way I understand it, the "good news" of Christianity isn’t really that good unless our philosophy of life holds to the reality that human beings are truly incapable of becoming God (or God-like) on our own.  If we believe that, then the Christian message of God reaching out to humanity through Christ becomes amazingly beautiful.

But if we hold to the idea that human beings somehow have the capacity within themselves to reach that higher level of truth and goodness, the Christian message loses a lot of its power and lustre.  The Gospel is fundamentally linked to our understanding of man’s nature (are we good or bad?).

This is not an attempt to downplay the value of humanity, it is simply a recognition that we are not capable, on our own, of becoming that which we should be.  We need God.  Maybe it sounds trite but seems to be very critical in this discussion.

"I think fundamentalism presents a simplistic, rather than a simple gospel, but with sadness, I have observed a certain correctness about their observations."

Their gospel is all about what to do to avoid hell.  How about "love your neighbor as yourself and love your enemy?"  Perhaps redemption (whatever that is) is already a reality, and many simply do not realize it.

Here’s an alternative view to the "good news"

The long and the short of it is this: "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." There’s a couple of things here that jump out at me.  There’s a kingdom that has come close, and this requires a change of direction on our part.  That makes me ask a couple of basic questions.  Was it not near before? What happened to bring it close if it wasn’t? Has it stayed close? Were we headed in the wrong direction before? Are we still headed in the wrong direction?

On a larger scale: What was the intent of God’s creation? What was its starting point in Genesis 1 and what is it’s trajectory in Revelation 22?  If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, what role does the good news play in that?

Well in light of all these questions and the frustration of various camps on what should seem like a simple question, "What must I do to be saved?"  I started down a 4 year long investigation myself.  Here’s my conclusions so far.  I’ve not put in the Scripture references in but I’m sure you can see where things fit. Let me know what you think…

The Divine Trajectory:I’ve been reading the Bible from the view that God has a divine trajectory set according to His holiness.  Maybe you’ve never heard this term before.  To be honest I can’t remember where I first heard it or even if I did.  At any rate I would like to submit to you an alternative view on what we currently know as salvation, progressive sanctification, and glorification.  I see these as three seperate phases in the redemption of mankind.  All of which are given the liquid term salvation.

In order for you to better understand where this perspective is coming from I’m going to need you to focus your imagination on some abstract concepts at first that will hopefully "snap" together when we’re all done.  I want to describe a scene for you and then I want you to take a mental Polaroid picture of it.  We’ll then use these pictures to help understand our story a little more and hopefully inspire within all of us an embrace of the term which we have come to know as salvation.  And not just to embrace it but to embrace with a zeal that consumes us with the Father’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

Creation and missional tension:Are you ready to start taking pictures?  In this first scene we find the creation story revealing something that God has created and he declares that everything is good and then when He is finished with man, male and female, He says that it is "very good".  Now zoom in here and focus on this aspect:  He declares it very good yet it is not called "perfect".  Do you find that interesting?  Is it something to investigate or is it just another term for complete/perfect?  If "very good" meant perfect why the "oops" moment only a chapter later?  Surely someone who creates something that breaks within a relatively short period of time after making it needs to have their head examined.  Do you think that God the Father looked up and the Spirit and the Son and said, "Whoops! We’re going to need to fix that.  Son initiate plan B."  Or did it break on purpose and by design?  What if God created something that required the "oops" moment as part of His design?  What if the "oops" is actually a good thing that is bringing about in us a state of being that we could not have obtained apart from the "oops".  At any rate I’m getting ahead of myself, he creates male and female and says "Very Good" (say cheese… SNAP… okay now set that on the counter and let that reveal itself later.)

Revelation - a new missional tension:Time for more pictures… At the other end of the narrative in Revelation, we find a marriage of the Lamb and His Bride.  The Bride has made herself ready and because of this it was granted to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and pure.  She is known as chosen, holy and dearly loved.  She is the one whom Christ had admonished in Revelation 2 and 3 to conquer, be faithful until death, and keep His works until the end.  We also see the defeat of Satan, the great white throne judgment and the creation of the new heaven, new earth and the transformation of the Bride into the new Jerusalem. (things seem strangely out of focus but take a another Polaroid)

The Divine Trajectory Line:At this point imagine taking both of these Polaroids and placing them on a wall with enough "space" in between these two events to allow for the course of history to have unfolded.  Now draw a line from the Genesis Polaroid to the Revelation Polaroid and you have what I call the "divine trajectory".  It doesn’t stop at Revelation it goes on for eternity.  And that’s important to understand.  This divine trajectory becomes the holy standard by which God’s creation is to be evaluated.  The part that is so radically amazing is what happens from point A to point B.  For it’s no where even close to that straight line.  In fact its a wild rollercoaster ride.  In order for mankind, by an act of His own free will, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever he must have a way in which that will can be trained to love God supremely.  How could God who is sovereign cause man to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever as an act of His own free will?  Can sovereignty and freewill co-exist or are the mutually exclusive?  I call it the missional tension and it’s a very messy thing.  It’s made for very messy theology over the years and an even messier ministry of reconciliation.

The purpose of the salvation that leads to eternal life:I propose that God in His sovereignty created an environment through which man could consecrate his own will to that of the Father’s by his own volition.  To do so God had to embrace an amazing story that was full of shockingly carnal, incredibly awesome, totally God and totally man moments that all made up a strangely peculiar series of events that bring together two seemingly incompatible concepts.  At the beginning we can’t see how it could ever be possible.  In the end we see how these things allowed for God’s people to become a holy nation and a royal priesthood.  And the farther you move across the time line you realize that for those who love Him, truly all things do work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

When you embrace this view that God put in place this divine trajectory even before the creation of the world so that mankind would glorify God and enjoy Him forever, it leads you to the follow conclusions.  He must predetermine that His Bride be conformed to the image of Christ - who by His very example "glorified [the Father] on earth, having accomplished the work that [he] gave [Christ] to do. (John 17:4)  It was not a predestination in the sense that he ordered everything tiny detail together like some cosmic sized domino game.  He made one simple pre-determined statement.  My creation must conform to glorifying me like my Son does - for in Him I am well pleased. (read John 17 in light of this)

The Fall and Missional Tension:This pre-determination leads to very abstract twist right from the start.  In order for man’s will to become God’s will by man’s free choice a fall into total depravity is required.  And a tree of knowledge of good and evil is placed in the garden.  For such a knowledge is necessary in order for man’s free will to be trained.  It becomes the crucible by which man discovers His dependence upon God.  Not only is it necessary for the tree to be planted in the garden but that Adam and Eve eat from that tree and thrust themselves into total depravity.  This requires something that would tempt them to bend their will against God.  God cannot tempt and so He creates something that will bring about His sovereign will.  And in this sense God creates something that will ultimately make peace but through evil. (Isa 45:7) (at this point make a very contorted face and take another Polaroid… when it reveals itself throw it down on the floor to represent the fall of man)

So Adam sins and we as a human race collectively fall BY GOD’S DESIGN into a pathetic helpless depravity from which we can never recover.  It’s as if we have entered into eternal death for we have been removed from the garden with the tree of life and it has been guarded ever since.  But while man is tumbling head over heels into an endless pit, redemption is promised. (Gen 3:15)  There’s a flash of hope! (take another Polaroid and put this one back on the wall all the way up on the divine trajectory line)

The beginning of the awkward romance:So what happens next?  Well, (not to mention lots of other scandalous things) it requires God fulfilling His promise to redeem man from total depravity through the seed of the woman.  And because that process had to start somewhere he chooses a man.  This man’s nothing special in an of himself.  In fact he makes his fair share of mistakes and he has his doubts just like you and I but He has the ability to trust God and God uses him.  And out of that one man, God makes a nation for himself.  Now before we go any further there’s something that has to be understood here.  Man’s still tumbling head over heels down the endless pit with no ability in and of himself to correct it.  Righteous deeds at this point are nothing but filthy rags.  Yes, some are calling on the name of the Lord and there are some like Enoch and Noah… but these men are the exception not the rule.  And more importantly they suffer from total depravity and it’s only by the grace of God that they are spared.  And these righteous men including Abraham and even his brother Lot live by faith and that not of themselves. (SNAP! put that one on the bottom of the wall… and then consider the missional tension - it’s pretty messy)

A Husband and His Wife of Harlotry:Now back to this nation that God’s chosen for himself.  He takes on the role of a husband with her and choses not to divorce her even though he knows she’s unfaithful.  While often his anger burns against her and she stirs His jealousy he remains faithful.  He is in the process of accomplishing his promise for the sake of His name and fulfilment of His purpose and His plan.  Like I said it’s messy but this is what has to happen in order for a sovereign God to be reconciled to His creation without violating His own character or her own identity.  He refuses to compromise his character, but he also refuses to make her compromise her free will.  This is what must happen in order to create a people who will choose to love God and others with their whole being even in the face of evil and never stray away regardless of the temptation.  This is key to understanding the union between free will and sovereignty.

[I’m skipping the Exodus here, the giving of the Law, the wandering in the wilderness, the entering into the promise land, the claiming of the promise land, and many other classics, but these are just more stories where all of these aspects above are stirring together in an awkward romance to say the least.  I want to come back and address these when I have more time.  But for now just know that there is two classic photos to take here: God as deliverer of His people out of slavery (And note that he takes them all!), and the giving of the law and the tabernacle… and eventually the temple.]

More on God’s whore of a wife… He tells her that she doesn’t need a king for he is her king but she insists and he goes through a long drawn out process with them demonstrating to them that earthly kings aren’t what they are all that cracked up to be.  Even if they are men after God’s own heart.  Even if they are men who are full of wisdom given by God.  Remember here creation is still tumbling head over heels into the endless pit… but now some are starting to realize it!  It’s another sign that maybe all these things are working together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.  Like always there are some that live rightly before God as they walk before Him in faith that redemption comes from God alone and they are rewarded for their efforts (but not immediately for they died without receiving the promise)  The prophets take front and center stage and speak of a new era in God’s economy.  (SNAP! This is an important picture because Israel realizes that it has a heart of stone and needs a heart of flesh in order to please God)

The Silence and missional tension:The narrative brings us to the point that God’s chosen nation hears nothing from Him for 400 years.  During this time God is preparing the soil for a plentiful harvest.  They know what they need, they just don’t know how to get it.  Israel tries to embrace what they think is holiness but it is shamefully outward and rarely if ever addresses the inward corrupt heart of the matter.  Various groups during this 400 year drought try to embrace the missional tension and shoot for the divine trajectory but they are all lacking God’s critical involvement.  (What happens next? SNAP! just to celebrate the missional tension and the fact that you can see that God is on the move)

The Redeemer Comes and Brings the Kingdom:Then enters God’s chosen servant His own Son to replace the current economy of fallen depravity with one of divine salvation by grace alone through a holy one time sacrifice of His Son.  His Son presents the gospel simply, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand."  Even before His death on the cross.  Do you find that interesting? I do.  He appoints his 12 disciples and short after sends them out with the same message and instructs them to heal and cast out demons.  Do you find that interesting? I do.  Christ fleshes out daily what life in that kingdom would consist of and also demonstrates what a person who is set apart for the will of the Father alone would look like.  Something that is key in the redemption story.  There’s a key to zoom in on here.  The kingdom of God is able to be engaged but look at the order.  Where’s the cross at? Have we taken a snap shot of that yet?  NOPE! But there’s a call to discipleship and there’s a proclamation of the Good News!  That’s funny where’s the Roman’s Road and the Four Spiritual Laws?  Are people actually entering into the Kingdom this way? (SNAP! this is such a telling picture just wait until it reveals itself)

WHY did He come? & His death and resurrection:So all this is building to what appears to be the pinnicale event.  Christ’s death and ressurrection.  But first Christ makes some telling statements that we should take note of.   First, Christ says he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  Second, Christ says that he’s come to seek and to save that which was lost (might I ask - does this refer back to the fall?).  Christ says that he did not come to save the righteous but sinners.  Zoom in here… that’s an upclose picture of something very important I think.  He says he came that they might have life and have it more abundantly but that the theif comes only to steal kill and destroy (and there we see mankind tumbling head over heels into the endless pit) It’s at this point that I’m going to make a major theological break from the Sunday School class (not that we haven’t already… so take a picture in case we need to get back here)

First Adam vs Second Adam:For reasons I’m going to go into in depth in later posts Christ becomes the savior of the world and just like in Adam one man caused the whole world to fall into total depravity Jesus by grace gives all men a second chance.  Jesus Christ stirs a want in every mans heart when he is lifted up and literally draws all men to himself.  For the rest of human history men will not be able to get rid of the call that Jesus places on their lives.  Christ’s death and resurrection puts an end to the total depravity of mankind and should they respond in faith to the gospel they will begin a mighty renovation of the will.  He literally brings humanity back to life from eternal death.  He establishes for all of mankind in this new economy a way to the Father but it is only through Him because that is what the Father predestined before the foundation of the world. Not only does he establish this new economy but he makes available to all the resources needed to not just survive but thrive in that new economy.  And then before He leaves, He calls his followers back to the divine trajectory and tells them that they are to go and make disciples as well.  Something that now is a realistic goal and now should be understood as essential to the obtaining of eternal life. (SNAP! A picture here of a light burden, an easy yoke, a completely surrendered life, the forging of a new will because we want to, and freedom to those who abide in Christ’s words… tack this one back up on the divine trajectory line… it’s a keeper!)

The Epistles and Embracing the Messiness of the Mission:So what happens next?  Well, the apostles then flesh out what it looks like in Acts to take this ministry of reconciliation to the world.  To let people know that they now have a heart of flesh that has been given to them by Christ but that those who choose to not accept God’s free gift of grace will become calloused and hardened and handed over to all kinds of depravity and this depravity will be worse than the first for nothing can save you from it.  In the Epistles we see them struggling to share with the world the difference between what God has done and what they as new believers in Christ are to do.  There’s a new economy and many aspects of the old economy are up for debate.  What do we keep? What do we leave behind?  Take a picture this is important stuff here… are you sensing the missional tension here?

Salvation from… Salvation to:More on grace alone and faith alone… The salvation from their total depravity was not by works that they had done but by grace alone.  However, it is that very grace that is required to daily walk out of darkness and into the glorious light of the Kingdom of God which was now AT HAND!  Hope was reinserted into the picture to all those who chose to walk away from the fallen world and embrace Christ even if it cost them their lives, and not just as a one time choice but as a daily choice.  It was to be a walk of faith.  Just like it had always been but this time every divine resource and even the power of God himself was at work in this coming salvation called progressive santification.  It’s important to understand that the salvation of all mankind was a point in human history when Christ was crucified and buried and then rose again.  God’s economy drastically changed that day and the sin of the whole world was paid for.  Transaction slips were made out for every man and woman in history and were given without question to all who asked for them.  They had been saved FROM something - total depravity.  But they needed yet to be saved to something - eternal life.  Our being saved is not a point in time salvation like previously described above but a faithful long walk of obedience in the same direction.  A daily walk in which we allow ourselves to be discipled by Christ no matter the cost.

In all reality it’s not about our continued existence it’s about the glory of God.  Amazingly he lets us be a part of the story, and it just so happens a very huge part.  Maybe this resonated with you or maybe it fell on a deaf ear.  Regardless I would like your view on it, and I hope it was something vintage yet fresh.

JC

weeping, pleading, seeking