A Relational God

[Dr. Shane]

The meaning of God making man after His imagine has many different interpretations.  I like a perspective I heard from David Asscherick.  It is the relational God.  The Godhead has three parts - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  There are relationships that exist within the Godhead.  Man was created to have relationships.  The family is a relationship unit.  The parents have a relationship with each other.  The children have sibling relationships with each other.  Then there are the children-parent relationships between the children and the parents.  Of course, my master's degree is in marriage and family therapy so I have a bias for liking a perspective such as that.

I am of the opinion that relationships are the most valuable thing we have on this planet.  Sin is destructive to relationships.  Sin hurts relationships between people and it hurts relationships between an individual and God.  Any doubts about the value of relationships?  Let me share some observations.  A rich man loses his mother (or wife or child).  He is overcome with grief.  He has no interest in his bank balance or the status of his investments.  He pours all of his energy into the relationships with the family members still living.  Another example is what I have witnessed in the developing countries where I served as a soldier and later as a missionary.  I have seen children and families laughing and playing.  These same families slept on wooden boards for beds and lived in huts with dirt floors.  I heard them sing at church and joyfully run around after the service laughing.  They had no monetary wealth but they did have healthy family relationships.

God so love the world that He sent His Son to die so that He could salvage the lost relationship with humanity.  It is not gold or prestige that most improves the quality of life.  It is relationships.  Relationships with other people and a relationship with God.

[Kevin H]

Excellent!!! Thank you Dr. Shane!!!

Relationship is the key to anything we can think of. From before creation to after the destruction of the wicked, and through out all eternity. The trinity are three things creatures need to know and experience for a life giving relationship with God: That God is God, the great self existent all powerful one. If this was the only way God revealed himself to us, as soon as creatures saw this part of God-self, it would quite literally scare creatures to death. There needed to be a oneness of the knowledge of God's greatness, as well as his intimate friendship with creatures. If God only revealed himself to us as approachable, sooner or later a creature would make an unwise choice and wonder why this friend thinks he knows so much more than we do. To exist creatures needed both, but even these two revelations, while each necessary, they were insufficient. God the Father and God the Son are both objective revelations of God. God created us to be (as he is) both objective and subjective. The Holy Spirit is God relating to us through our subjective existential experience. 

The gospel is all about relationship. I've been thinking a lot about what I read in Dr. Doukhan's commentary on Genesis about a year or so ago, and a misreading that has hurt relationships. There is a poem in Genesis 3:14 through 16. Sometimes we break up our thinking between verse and/or chapter divisions.  This poem starts out with the curse on the serpent. It talks about the enmity between the woman and the serpent and her decedents, especially one seed, the promised seed that is described as "Him" and "He" and while the serpent was going to try to kill "Him" the attack will not cause a fatal wound but that act would be fatal to the serpent.  The poem goes on to describe how, in both the physical pain of childbirth, but also the emotional connection to her children, that there will be a stronger emotional connection for both what they do well, but also in their poorer choices. That the husband (as seen later) will not have the same emotional connection, and is often more focused on work, that the woman just won't forget about him like how some insects are to the male of their species, but she will still desire him to be in this family situation. Then comes the very misunderstood words "and He shall rule over you." Too often over history we have applied this "He" to the husband. But "He" is a character who has already appeared in this story, who is already identified in the poem. This "He" is to rule Adam, Eve and all their children. Yes, He is coming some day, but not future in the by and by, but HE IS, HE AM, He is already there with them, and this dysfunctional human family were to turn to this "He" to rule them. This is the same "He" from Exodus 3 "He is the God of Abraham, He is the God of Isaac and He is the God of Jacob" The whole passage is about relationships; How the women and children and how they relate to the husband, and that one more person was needed, the promised "He". 

I have been writing down things I've learned that I've found useful from both Biblical Studies and my work as a psychiatric nurse. There are a few chapters by Mrs. White that I wish our church would publish under one binding as a missionary book. They are "The Origin of Evil" from Patriarchs and Prophets, "Why Was Sin Permitted" from Great Controversy, "God Made Manifest in Christ" from Signs of the Times January 20, 1890, "Gethsemane" from Desire of Ages, which are all background leading to the chapter "It is Finished" Mrs. White's crowning work. When talking about this with a pastor, he told me that these are available on line and can be copied and sent out. I hope I don't get into trouble for this, but I've taken these chapters and added a few of my own: One talking about what the terms "Milk and Honey" meant for the ancient world, another on what the Greek word mistranslated "Inn" in Luke 2 actually means (it was a room in a family home for out of town relatives to stay in when visiting) and looking at what archaeology has taught us about Nazareth. Also a chapter on misconceptions tradition gives us on the death of Jesus and the Jews, a chapter on last day events and looking at who hell fire really is (Yes, it's relational again). But then I felt the need to add to this the two chapters I had written from my work as a psychiatric nurse (as well as college and Air Force). The first chapter deals with human nature, some things that we all have in common, and while not all inclusive, I've been impressed at the overlap and dovetailing between the ideas of the philosopher/poet Eli Siegel in his "Aesthetic Realism" , the psychologist William Glasser in his "Choice Theory/Reality Therapy", and the work of Lois Eggers in her "Common Sense Psychology". Then one on some of our major differences as in our temperaments, love languages, apology languages, and attachment styles.  I see all of these involved together in our relationships, and our doctrine of the investigative judgment.  It all grows out of our relationship with each other and to the promised "He".

[Gustave]

I see, Jesus is "part of God", a third to be more exact.