Now this one makes me smile and think. :)

I really like your Trinitarian explanation. I also like the tension with which you hold doctrine and life. The greatest truth is in the tension between the extremes.

someone who stands up and says “Hold the phone.. what’s the deal with this?” most every culture has these people, Jews call them Prophets, Greeks called them Heroes, Egyptians called them “Sons of Ra.”

Hmm, I guess from your perspective this may be true. The thing is we dont all see things quite the same way.

You know Luke, I have always wondered why we actually need a redeemer? Is Jesus the best way for you to make sense of the non sensical?

nah… if anything it adds to the view. all things are windows to the divine, you, me, my dog, my wife, your wife, my baby daughter Eve (esp. her!). Jesus is part of the Trinity because he is the best example of how to live for others and reach out to the marginalized. Jesus is the best human window to the divine.

of course this gets into doctrine which i just decried for being stupid.. so it goes… paradox of being. here’s my view on this doctrine:

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (traditional lang) equals Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer (contemp. lang) which means God created and is still creating, gives us examples all the time in our relationships and esp. in the life of Christ, and God sustains through new revelations through our relationships (like on here! learning new things every post y’all do!).

All things have an idolatrous aspect to the observer… but to the worshipper the mindset must be on symbol. take my gma for instance.

she was a zealous Roman Catholic. every morning she’d wake up and say the rosary (or part of it), in front of a plastic statue of Jesus and her Bible. to the observer it looked as though she was worshipping the statue and book and should be stoned as an idolatress.. but for gma she knew they were symbols, windows to the divine which aided in her meditation which helped her go through her day as a woman of grace and peace.

of course this, as Doug points out, is part of a system which can get rigid and kill off the meditation and just have boring, dry ritual. the exoteric vs. the esoteric. i think it’s good to have both.. the exoteric leads to the esoteric, the ritual gives us a glimpse of the divine.

clear as mud?

Seems to me that if you stick Jesus in the equation you ultimately limit your view of G-d(creator). In fact it strikes me as some form of Idolatry. And doesnt the Old Testament warn against this?