Monday Muchies Relational Theology

Well, its been a while…its been a long while. Sorry. But at last, me and my somewhat thought provoking ideas are back. I miss the good times, people telling me I’m stupid (they might be right), and others (who I’m fairly sure don’t have the authority to make such decisions) telling me I’m going to hell. Seems to me a good place to start my new topics of thought begin with my own theology.

I feel like I always have to include a disclaimer on these things, nevertheless, here it goes again. These are simply my thoughts, I’m not smart enough to be qualified for even half of these thoughts I have. If it helps, good; if not, forget it. This is not gospel, just what I think about certain things. Smarter people are encouraged to correct, demoralize, and even pity me. Please respond though as intellectual activity is encouraged by conversation.

Relational Theology. In Genesis, the bible tells us that God created man in his image. That leaves us with a somewhat interesting question; what is God’s image. The Christian faith establishes that God is in fact a Trinity…three in one. Does this mean man is created with 3 parts in one? I think I’ll get a little more into that next week, for now lets think about the 3 people of God. The Trinity is really confusing, the idea of combining three people into one kinda makes my head hurt. The bible tells us that the parts are different enough to where Jesus doesn’t know everything God knows, like when the Day of Judgment is (Matt 24:36).

If this is the case there must be some kind of relationship between the 3 entities. (Did I mention I got a degree in sociology) To help to picture this, imagine if you can The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit at three points of a triangle. This is important for an illustration later. The distance between the points would represent how close they are in a relationship. For The Trinity, I can only imagine that the distance would be so small that it would be approaching zero. (I’ll try to lay off of my calc terms)

The reason I bring this up, is because perhaps part of the image God created us in is in our relationships. Perhaps our relationships follow a similar pattern. Imagine if you will a relationship you have with a friend. To picture it, it should be you with a line connecting to your friend. However, both you and your friend have a relationship with God. You might say, but Aaron, my friend is an Atheist. Even if that is so, a relationship exists, its just not a good one. But for illustrative purposes, lets say you and your friend are about at the same relationship with God. With our triangle, if you get closer to your friend, the line or the distance between you and God decreases. Also, if you get closer to God, either your friend must as well, or the distance between you and said friend increases.

This could be important in that if you have a friend that does not have a very good relationship with God, take the atheist from earlier. In order for you to get closer to that friend, either the distance between you and God will increase, or the distance between God and the atheist will decrease. If you have several friends like that you are getting closer to, who do you think is easier to move? Conversely, if the atheist has several friends who are closer to God, who do you think is easier to move?

I believe that relationships are an essential part of life and humanity. God wants us to have good relationships, but sometimes it changes things to think that God is a part of every relationship, that every relationship is triune.

I really hope this makes sense, I wish I had the know how to draw pictures and put them up with it, but I’m not that smart...Chance and Justin told me how to do the one at the top. Anyway, let me know what you think...