Godology complete
Two days ago I finished Godology. Well, no one ever finishes a book, but two days ago I abandoned it to my editor. It should come out next year sometime. That’s the thing about books. You spend several months writing them and then by the time they hit the shelf it’s like, “Did I write that?” Here’s a portion from a chapter entitled “Mardi Gras and Icicles:”
“So I’m standing on a parade route in New Orleans yelling my head off for beads. It’s Mardi Gras and electricity zigzags through the air. The jazz is swinging, the floats are rolling, and I’m dancing like the world’s about to end. To my regret, I catch a glimpse of a topless fat guy catching doubloons. On his belly was a bright red fleur de lis, the official emblem of New Orleans. The pedals wiggled as if independent from his body. I winced—it’s no wonder they call it “Fat Tuesday.”
The next Sunday I stumbled into church. The excitement was low and a general boredom hung over the congregation. As the music played, I didn’t feel like getting my praise on. My hands wouldn’t clap. My feet wouldn’t dance. I tried to squeal out a few notes, but my throat was hoarse. I was all used up—just another dehydrated Christian sucked dry by the fangs of worldliness.”
. . .
“The Trinity is a mystery. No doubt about it. But this is what we know: God has forever existed in three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. Before cities were constructed or worlds created, God hung out with himself. He was His own party. Some say three’s a crowd, but in this VIP club, the King, Prince, and Advisor share a perfect blend of intimacy, community, and eternity.
I’ve always been a sucker for thrift stores. Give me a few dollars and a free Saturday and I’ll come back with anything from a torn up pair of jeans to a urine stained couch. On one such day, I stumbled upon a faded blue Bruce Lee T-shirt. He was really laying down the law with a flying dragon kick. The shirt didn’t have any bloodstains, so I decided to try it on. As I stepped into the three-way mirror, a thousand kung fu kicks appeared in the distance. Each pane of glass reflected the images of the others. And I stood in awe, gazing at the Bruce Lee infinity.
How can God be one and three at the same time? Got me. I’m still trying to figure out how Bruce Lee jumped that high. The English language can’t articulate the unity of God. Though grammatically troubling, it’s perfectly accurate to say that God are one and They is three. Like a three-way mirror, each person in the Godhead satellites the other—an eternal reflection—forever bright, forever burning, forever dressed in glory. Most families have some degree of dysfunction, but not God. In Him there is no distant stepfather, prodigal son or absentee spirit.
Believe it or not, the word Trinity is actually not written in the Bible.3 But the Scriptures clearly teach the unity of God: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4, NIV), and they also teach the diversity of God: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19, NIV). So we believe them both.
One of the beauties of living in a postmodern era is that we don’t need a cold scientific explanation to believe in the supernatural anymore. Modernism is behind us. In the eighteenth century the Age of Faith gave way to an Age of Reason. But now in the twenty-first century, we are entering into another great Age of Faith. We are living in an age when we know that the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know much at all. You know? And such knowledge makes us small again.”