Why This Blog?

Unlike Romper Room’s omniscient Miss Molly, I cannot see any of you who might be reading this. You might be friends, family, curious onlookers, people just stopping by – maybe that will become clearer as time goes on. If YOU want to find out more about the person writing what you’re reading, go right on over to the “About Me” section.

So you might be a person who identifies as a believing Christian. You might be intellectually and spiritually curious, committed to a different faith understanding, or more the flexible type. However you think of yourself, here and now I want to give a simple description of what I hope you will encounter through my ongoing quest to engage the living God on his terms and in his own self-description. So, here it is:

As a Christian, I hold the inevitable conclusion that God is “discoverable.” This is what God says about himself. But this discovery is not like coming to understand that 1+1 = 2 by counting on our fingers. In the first place, God is a person (THE Person), and we cannot dissect persons into simple facts-and-figures data points that add up to a neat and tidy sum. Second, God is 1+1+1 = 1. Not just a person, but a unity of persons. In other words, a community in and of himself. Third, God describes himself by the use of moral, spiritual, and emotional attributes. He says that he is just, kind, powerful, loving, merciful; that he expresses joy, compassion, anger, sorrow; that he creates, connects, and concerns himself with the world.  And fourth, God has a history that he has caused to be written over time. It is, like God and like us, a complex expression of events and relationships, causes and effects, motives and purposes.

So my goal is to look at God’s self-disclosure as much on his terms as possible and, by doing so, to avoid the pitfalls that stand in our discipleship path. If we can especially not fall down on either side of the famous truth divides – law and grace, faith and works, justice and mercy … – we will have accomplished a great thing, indeed. The perils are many, but the Father is good, the Holy Spirit is strong, and Jesus goes both before and behind.  He will not disappoint us.

What will I do? I plan to begin working through the idea of faith. Why? Because I believe that faith is the great gift FROM God that opens up the whole treasure store of knowledge OF God. And, the more we know God, the more we will know ourselves as he means us to be: created and transformed by his love into reflections of divine goodness and life.