Thursday, October 09, 2008

Spinning the Kingdom in new directions

I've really enjoyed this article, of which this is an extract:

There are no copies in creation, no cheap imitations. And this is not because God micromanages the world, but because God apparently loves freedom. God loves watching things grow. Is it any wonder that God enjoys cooperating with you and me to do his moral and spiritual work? Our choices, good and bad, constantly spin the Kingdom of Heaven in new and unforeseen directions. We are creative coworkers with the Almighty.

3 comments:

PetertheRoot said...

Glenn,
Are you an ardent creationist, miraculous design or evolutionist. I have now become a creative evolutionist ie freedom of expression and development seems to be an expression of love rather than created analytical bounded expectation of the victorian era. This has theological implications with the garden of eden, the nature of man and original sin but this fits better with a universe of 12 billion years old. What do you think?

Glenn said...

Hi Peter
I've only just read your comment, about two years too late.

I'm happy to let science answer the 'how' questions, so I'm happy to believe in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe.

I refuse to believe in a God who is less magnificent than the Creation we see through (for example) the Hubble.

Glenn said...

I'm also happy to let the Bible answer the 'who are we' questions.

I believe the early chapters of Genesis (till chapter 11) are all about teaching us who we are in a Middle-Bronze-Age idiom. It seems to me that any story with talking snakes, literal-metaphorical trees and two protagonists called 'Mankind' and 'Living' is clearly intended to be something other than straight reportage. It doesn't mean it isn't 'true' or 'authoritative'. We just have to engage our brains a bit more.

Finally, as regards the Fall, I agree that's a problem. (Death is a vital driver to evolution in a finite system.) But I believe that both 'fallenness' and 'redemption' are best understood in the context of a God who is beyond and above time. The Bible talks of Christians as 'chosen before the foundation of the world'; I wonder if the Fall couldn't be similarly real, but similarly not entirely constrained within our human restrictions, which only experience time in one direction?