When Heaven and Earth Collide

My birthday is Thursday, but I received the present from my wife over a month ago.

As backstory, I built a band with many of my friends when I was in high school. It lasted through college, and even into my adult years. It stands as one of the most important times in my life. It was a time when I got together with other men my age. We spent time praying, sharing our struggles with faith, sex, and the world around us. We rehearsed regularly and played as often as three or four times a week in bars, clubs and churches around Colorado.

The brotherhood created through that band is one of the true treasures of my life. I have a few photographs from our time together on the walls of my office. They are reminders to me of so many things. Things I could express like friendship and pleasure, and things I can’t express but are hinted at by words like joy, thankfulness, regret.

The last show I played with TMJ didn’t end as it should have. I had been in a fight with one of my best friends about how things were being handled in our band. I was transitioning into grad school and marriage, and as the show concluded it suddenly felt like something I had worked to build--had enjoyed for seven years--simply evaporated before me. My best reasonings said it was just time to grow up. But my heart has been saying that things ought to have been different ever since.

Even in regret life moves on. I still saw many of my bandmates regularly, but not in musical settings. As my birthday approached I had some conversations with a few them about old times. On a recent occasion, one of them slipped me a tape from a show we did in 1998. I happened to be going on a retreat that weekend and had 10 hours to fill. Driving there and back I must have listened to that tape 20 times, singing our songs at the top of my lungs and just reliving a show that at the time was just another weekend gig.

Around midnight, as I drove home, I recall praying in my car and briefly asking that when God raised me to life again--when all things were restored and made whole--I would just like to play with my band again. There is very little else in the world I would treasure as much.

I suppose, the ache of joy once experienced, discarded, and now placed in a future hopes is the story that the Bible tells from cover to cover.

As is frequently the case with God, he had begun answering my prayers months before hand, and in the middle of May my beautiful bride assembled all the players from the later days of my band. She drew together people from around the country back into one of our favorite little venues and invited all our closest friends to participate in one last trumpmotherjones show.

Before we began our show, we stopped to pray, and it all struck me. I saw that my prayer had been answered. That my last show was not the one six years earlier that ended so poorly, it was this one which was surrounded by a spirit of joy and togetherness. I stood, there with my brothers, and heaven was engulf all the space around us. We were standing in the presence of our savior, with our friends, with our family. I was experiencing now, what it would be like then. “May your will be done on earth at it is in heaven.”

It was a profound illustration to me of God’s dream for our broken world. One day we will be raised to life, the everlasting life to come, and then all the hints and experiences of fleeting joy will culminate. We will see that we were always in heaven seeing the shadows and the edges breaking into our backstory.

I suppose I won’t have to proposition Jesus for the opportunity to gig with my band again. I have already seen and experienced now, what things will be like then, when all things are restored, even Colorado funk bands. A TMJ reunion is a given even if we don't play again in my lifetime.

The question now is whether or not we get to play for the company of Heaven (which is a whole new request). But the most enjoyable setting I can think to play won't be in that grand arena. It will be in a small practice room somewhere, and in it will seven guys sharing life, reminding each other of times from long ago, just being together.

Creedal Christianity

I'm just pompous enough to think this is a good idea.

This is an attempt to begin a contemporary creed. By no means do I think I could (or should) be the only author of such a statement. Nor do I think it would have much impact if I were. This is more of an experiment. I want to see theologians today draw a map of Christianity. I want to see where we put our own emphases. Where we sketch the lines. The best thing that could happen is that it would go out and folks would begin altering it wikipedia style. Perhaps this will serves as an adequate skeleton.

This initial offering focuses on trinitarian orthodoxy, ecclesiastic unity, and communal redemption. As a beginning point, these seem to me three points of Christianity which are non-negotiable.

The philosophy behind this statement is to affirm Christianity in its most fundamental form. There are many topics worthy of inclusion, but which do not strike me as essential to one being a Christian. I desire this creed to articulate the raw Christian worldview, and allow freedom and openness for exploration in other matters. Theology is an alive science: these are the borders as I see them:

"We are united in these essentials; gracious and tolerant toward other non-essentials, and in all things charitable toward our brothers and sisters who are pursuing God and his wondrous love.

God is real and utterly in love with you and I.

God can be known and enjoyed. God has been known and enjoyed through out history. God can be known and enjoyed through our reason, our experiences, and the experiences of other God-followers. We know God best through the life and teaching of Jesus.

Jesus is God. The Father to whom Jesus prays is God. The Love--—the Spirit--that exists between the Father and Jesus is God. God is three, three personalities who each are God. God is one, one divine essence. God is a diversity of persons: three members; God is a unity of substance: one divine being. Threeness is the way the One God actually is. There is no God but the Father, Son, and Spirit, bound together —in community, devotion, and love throughout eternity.

The universe and all humanity are the creation of God. The universe was made for no other reason than to create a family of loving personalities with God himself as the architect, sustainer, and most glorious inhabitant. We are made to imitate God. In reflecting God, we meet the purpose for our creation: being in community with God and with each other and with God's creation. This community of love, fellowship, and joy will last forever.

Something has gone wrong. Humanity is born into a cycle of failure that has characterized human existence from the beginning. Created by God, we are good. But humanity--—initially, as a whole, and individually--—has chosen to reject the community God offers with himself and with each other. We are made to reflect God'’s love and goodness, but the most essential aspects of ourselves reject this. Our failure to reflect God is known as sin. Sin is essentially that which destroys the community we share with God and with one another. Sin has found lodging within all human beings. We all sin and desire to continue sinning, and are each aware of our personal participation in sin as an outworking of our choices, attitudes and actions.

Because of sin, we have been alienated from God, from real intimacy with one another, from harmony and joy within the creation as a whole, and from the purpose for which God created us. Because of sin, we have been enslaved. Our hearts are dark and our wills are corrupt. Because of sin, we have become depraved, and we are unable to remedy our dire situation. The problem of sin extends to the core of our being and cannot be solved by any effort we might muster.

God desires deeply to free us and set all things right again because, despite our state, each person matters to God. God--the Son--became a human being to free us from sin and its consequences. Jesus'’ death has restored the relationship we were made to share with God; He bears the cost of transforming us from God'’s enemies to his friends. Jesus'’ teaching show us how we may walk in that relationship with God and each other as we are meant to. And Jesus life is the supreme example of a human living in the image of God. By the power of God'’s Spirit, we are each being made more like Jesus that we may love each other and enjoy the community of God.

Jesus reveals God'’s essence and his design for human life; He discloses God's intention for humanity: life-in-community; and in calling His hearers to enter the kingdom of God by repenting and believing the Gospel, Jesus established the foundation for participation in the community of God. Jesus'’ entire life, death, and resurrection mark his work in originating the eternal community of God. Until the day he returns, Jesus continues to unite and lead the community of God through his ongoing presence, and the Spirit of God living in each follower.

Our best response is to give our whole self to Jesus, to love one another, and to live our lives as a wholistic community dedicated to one another, the good of the world, and the God who makes us alive. In doing so, we will fulfill--—as best we can--—the intention God had in creating us, loving us, and dying that we might live."

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