richmondgracefellowshipFiled under: Uncategorized
Recently Dr. C. Baxter Kruger blogged about the Fall of Adam and its impact on humanity. He also went on to discuss the wrath of the Father in the midst of the deception and rebellion of Adam and Eve. The wrath of God in the Fall is not to be seen in the typical Western paradigm wherein wrath means that heads are going to roll. The Father’s wrath in the Fall is to refuse to see us lost in our new-found mythology. In the Fall mankind began to see God through a fallen lens of fear. Remember the first human words spoken after the Fall? Those words tell the whole story of how we came to be inveterate mythologizers. Immediately following the Fall God sought Adam for their daily playtime and walks… “Adam where are you?” Adam was hiding in the bushes because, as he said, “I was afraid.”
It makes no sense for Adam to hide from the God who called him into being and gave him Life. There is a mythology at work in Adam’s mind. He suddenly believes God to be other than He is.
God never changed in the Fall- Adam did. It is here that Davina Winn makes such a profound and brilliant observation:
I think the Fall is like a child that has developed autism. One day you are interacting and relating with your child and the next moment there is something not right. Jenny McCarthy describes it like this about her son Evan who developed autism at two years old after receiving his childhood shots. “Before the vaccination, he was huggy, lovey, snuggly,” she says in the newest issue of Us Weekly. “Then it was like someone came down and stole him.” As a parent, did Jenny say, “Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Too bad…now your on your own kid.” No, she fought and she fought hard to win him back and now at six years old. He shows not signs of autism. Is Jenny McCarthy a more loving parent than God the Father. I don’t think so.
Truly the Father is more passionate about humanity than Jenny is about Evan. In fact the passion Jenny has for Evan is a full and direct sharing of Jesus’ passion for His creation. This sort of love and passion has but One source.
Thank you Father, Son, and Spirit for refusing to see us lost and pass into non-being! Amen!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: family, Father, God, Jesus, love, politics, relationship, Son, spirit, Trinity
Who are we? We are a multi-cultural group of people who are passionately learning to live loved in the Father’s embrace. What this means is that we heartily believe that God exists as the Trinity. God is not a singular being all alone in heaven. God exists in union as Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Father’s eternal Son and nearly 2000 years ago the Son became human and dwelt among us. We believe that the witness of the Bible is that Triune God brought us into being for the sole purpose of sharing the life and love that the Father and the Son share in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That just means basically that God is like a family filled with love, acceptance, sharing, giving, laughing, nurturing, caring, and dancing and that we were created to share all that with each other and with God. We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the human race has been reconciled to the Father and is utterly loved and adored. It is our goal at Richmond Grace Fellowship to learn to live in the freedom of that love. Jesus set us free for freedom’s sake and we are learning to live in the freedom of His love! Come find out what it means to learn to live loved in the Father’s embrace!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: athiest, family, Father, God, Grace, Holy Spirit, Jesus, politics, religion, Richmond, Son, study, theology, Trinity
All of us have some belief about God. Even those who do not believe any god exists have a belief about God- its just that- they don’t believe any god exists. I once heard someone say that he was an agnostic insomniac with sever dyslexia and that this combination of conditions caused him to lie awake at night wondering of there is a dog. Yeah you’re right… that’s just a recycled old joke. Funny though huh?
Well saying that we all have some belief about God is the same as saying we all have some knowledge about God. Whether our personal knowledge about God is that there is no such thing or that He is a singular being all by Himself in the cosmos or that God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, we all have some God-Knowledge.
So guess what? There is a term used to refer to God-Knowledge and it actually means just that. That term is Theology. Now don’t get scared and stay away from that back button… theology should thrill you not bore you or intimidate you. Theology’s task is to excite and thrill people about the good news of Who is God. The fact that we wince or shutter at the word theology is a sad indictment on it’s practitioners. Theology is a discipline by which we may grasp the entire council of God.
In the first instance the question for every theology and every theologian is this: “Who is this God revealed in Jesus Christ?” It is here that each of us must start in thinking about our God.
Theology should incite in us a feeling of goodness and joy. I am not a trained theologian– lets just say I am a theologian in training. I have two good mentors Timothy J. Brassell of Portsmouth, VA and Grace Communion International- and Dr. C. Baxter Kruger of Jackson, MS and Perichoresis, Inc. With their guidance, the guidance of the Grace Communion International Theology Team, and the studies I am a part of at Grace Communion Seminary my hope is to become a pastoring theologian of sorts that can help heal the bad reputation theology has earned itself over the past few hundred years. The Science of God should make us leap for joy as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reveal to us the boundless love and acceptance of the Father’s embrace of humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.
