so i asked for introductions from the people that made it to this blog and as part of the intros i asked for each comment to include a theological question that was on the brain. so i’d like to take a chance to make a response to those questions. in no way am i attempting to be the end all be all to these questions, but to be a conversation starter. this is one way of doing theology. it is called open source theology. we work out our theology together in community and allow all voices to speak and all ears to listen. so as i take a stab at these questions, please clarify if i’ve erred in your original question, and bring as many people into this conversation as you want to.

Old Swift Turtle Hunting in the Night poses two issues: Practical Theology – the pain of being on a Church Building Committee and dealing with the small minded.

Real Theology – God is internal, not external. We have no way of conceptualizing God except to describe him with human terms in a human context. We should realize our lmited context in order to not limit God or ourselves. Plus, we try and make it too mystical and complex. Sorry, but it is pretty darn simple, love each other, love yourself.

There are two reasons why I chose to respond to this one last, although I didn't anticipate taking this long. First reason is because Swift Turtle was the last one to post a response, but since I messed the order on the the first post, I needed more rationale. So, what I came up with is that this is a very hard question to respond to. Here's why it's hard for me: 1. it's not really a question, it's a statement, which almost necessitates any response being a debate as opposed to a dialogue, which I am much more comfortable with. 2 there are many deep-rooted presuppositions here that would take a long time to explore in order to make any kind of response worthy of the weight of the issue at hand. I simply cannot take the time to do this here. 3 there has been a lot of thought put into this and even written down, but I have not read much about this, nor do I have significant pages on this issue in my personal library. 4. and lastly, what has been written has often been dismissed as heretical or at the very best unorthodox.

So the easy part of this is to deal with the practical theology. Church committee's suck. I've never been on one or around one that has been a positive experience all the way around. Putting small minded people on a board that needs a big vision and great leadership is a recipe for disaster. For that, I am sorry, but the only options are quitting or gutting it out. God's grace and peace be with you my friend.

Now for the main course. For the sake of creating dialogue among those reading this post, I will rephrase this as a question: Is God internal or external? That is to say, is God something inside of indivdual people, or is God something outside of us? So diving right in…

Orthodox or historical Christianity has claimed that God is three different, but equal persons. So we have a parental God, a child God, and a spirit God. This parental God, most well known as the Father has been mostly described as being outside of humanity, time, and space. This is the God that created the heavens and earth, led Moses to gather the people of Israel and get them out of Egypt, and told Jonah to go to Ninevah using a storm and fish to get him there. The child God was/is Jesus and was physically a man that lived on earth as a Jewish boy and man, was crucified by Romans and Jews, was raised from the dead, and then floated up into heaven. The spirit has been called the Holy Spirit and is known to dwell inside people playing the role of teacher, leader, sage, etc. So we have a God in Scripture and in history that is at times desribed as totally outside of people, totally human, and a little bit of both. Hmm.

In some ways I can get off the hook here, because this is almost more of a philosophical issue as opposed to a theological question. But I guess I won't do that. I'm probably going to do something even worse. I'm going to play the paradox card. I agree that God is internal. I disagree that God is only internal. I think God is external too. I do think that the cards have stacked on the side of God being external and we need to capture a better theology of God being part of us.

Part of where I get this is from the creation narrative that tells the story of God making us in God's image.  On the one hand, if God created us, then there is no other way of explaining this other than to say an external God imposed his will on the physical world.  Thus, this God would have to be external in that sense.  The strange thing is that we are created in the image of the Creator.  So this tells us that we are a part of God and God is part of us.  We are all bearer's of God. Another part of this equation is the idea that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.  Somehow throught this strange process, God imparts his Spirit on his people. This means, God's Spirit is a part of me right now, and if I'm living correctly, more of the God part of me will be showing up and less of the sinful part of me will be showing up because the Spirit's work.  One of the problems of evangelical and charismatic theologies of the Spirit is that it is too dualistic in my opinion.  The Spirit is very much separated from my being.  So actually what is happening is the Spirit is taking over me, but could be gone in a moment's notice.  Then it is my responsibility to invoke that Spirit again, or ask her to come back.  It seems that this Holy Spirit thing is much more connected to my personhood.  

The last part of this for me is the idea that Christians are the body of Christ.  This is something that I think we need to take very seriously.  That as Christians, we really are Christ because God put himself in us.  Together we really do make up God.  This is where things can get really strange for some people I think, because of so much new age thinking and fear of it.  I'm not saying we're all little god's running about being God.  I'm saying the community is part of what makes up God.  Whenever we work for justic by loving the unloved, caring for the homeless, sick, widowed, orphaned, or stand up for the oppressed, God is working and bringing about the Kingdom, but that is happening through us and in us

All that and I still say that God is some sort of existential reality that I cannot even begin to undertand.  I look at the world and I cannot just say that God is only conscious reality within me and the rest of humanity.  I look at humanity, and I realize that there is less of God in humanity than there should be.  Part of my problem is that I've witnessed things that cannot be explained by math or the sciences, even quantum physics, which is explaining a lot of things that had no explanation before.  It may be naive of me, but I still believe in miracles although I am more suspicious now than I've ever been, but I still do think they happen and have happened in history.  The only way that I know how to explain this is to say that God's existence is a paradox of sorts.  God is both inside me and outside of me.  I guess that is the only way omniprescence really works.