Just finished The Reason for God by Timothy Keller and I must say, it's an outstanding read! So much useful information that I ended up hi-lighting most of the book. While there were a lot of facts and information to use when witnessing to nonbelievers, I think the chapter that I loved the most was the one called The Dance of God. It described the Trinity and their relationship in such a beautiful way it brought tears to my eyes. And while I would love to include the entire chapter here, time does not permit, so I will give you some excerpts and hope it pulls at your heart the way it did mine.
The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational.
The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love.
Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this - perichoresis. Notice our word "choreography" within it. It means literally to "dance or flow around."
The Father... Son ... and Holy Spirit glorify each other ...
At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the
Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to
one another...
When early Greek Christians spoke of perichoresis in God, they meant that each
divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant
movement of overture and acceptance each person envelops and encircles the
others.
Cornelius Plantinga
In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing - not even just
one person - but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if
you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance .... The pattern of this three-
personal life is ...the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very
center of reality.
C.S. Lewis
God does ask us to obey him unconditionally, to glorify, praise, and center our lives around him. I hope you finally see why he does that. He wants our joy! He has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love. And the only way we, who have been created in his image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around him instead of ourselves.
We share his joy first as we give him glory (worshipping and serving him rather than ourselves); second, as we honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in the image of God's glory; and third, as we cherish his derivative glory in the world of nature, which also reflects it. We glorify and enjoy him only as we worship him, serve the human community, and care for the created environment.
The story of the gospel makes sense of our indelible religiousness, so Christians do evangelism, pointing the way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God through Jesus. The gospel makes sense of our profoundly relational character, so Christians work sacrificially to strengthen human communities around them as well as the Christian community, the church. The gospel story also makes sense of our delight in the presence of beauty, so Christians become stewards of the material world, from those who cultivate the natural creation through science and gardening to those who give themselves to artistic endeavors, all knowing why these things are necessary for human flourishing.
Christians, then are the true "revolutionaries" who work for justice and truth, and we labor in expectation of a perfect world in which:
He will wipe every tear from their eye. There will be no more death
or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things is passed
away. Revelation 21:4
And when we get there, we will say, "I've come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it!" And it will by no means be the end of our story. In fact, as C.S. Lewis put it, all the adventures we have ever had will end up being only "the cover and the title page." Finally we will be begin "Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before."
The doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational.
The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love.
Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this - perichoresis. Notice our word "choreography" within it. It means literally to "dance or flow around."
The Father... Son ... and Holy Spirit glorify each other ...
At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the
Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to
one another...
When early Greek Christians spoke of perichoresis in God, they meant that each
divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant
movement of overture and acceptance each person envelops and encircles the
others.
Cornelius Plantinga
In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing - not even just
one person - but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if
you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance .... The pattern of this three-
personal life is ...the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very
center of reality.
C.S. Lewis
God does ask us to obey him unconditionally, to glorify, praise, and center our lives around him. I hope you finally see why he does that. He wants our joy! He has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love. And the only way we, who have been created in his image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around him instead of ourselves.
We share his joy first as we give him glory (worshipping and serving him rather than ourselves); second, as we honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in the image of God's glory; and third, as we cherish his derivative glory in the world of nature, which also reflects it. We glorify and enjoy him only as we worship him, serve the human community, and care for the created environment.
The story of the gospel makes sense of our indelible religiousness, so Christians do evangelism, pointing the way to forgiveness and reconciliation with God through Jesus. The gospel makes sense of our profoundly relational character, so Christians work sacrificially to strengthen human communities around them as well as the Christian community, the church. The gospel story also makes sense of our delight in the presence of beauty, so Christians become stewards of the material world, from those who cultivate the natural creation through science and gardening to those who give themselves to artistic endeavors, all knowing why these things are necessary for human flourishing.
Christians, then are the true "revolutionaries" who work for justice and truth, and we labor in expectation of a perfect world in which:
He will wipe every tear from their eye. There will be no more death
or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things is passed
away. Revelation 21:4
And when we get there, we will say, "I've come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it!" And it will by no means be the end of our story. In fact, as C.S. Lewis put it, all the adventures we have ever had will end up being only "the cover and the title page." Finally we will be begin "Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before."
