A Bridge, a Doorway, a Portal?
The Treehouse: Conversations About God
Hello, Treehouse People.
Well, it’s all academic flirtation until things get f*cking real, isn’t it? It’s all fun and games and speculation and playing with possible scriptural interpretations until…well, until it’s not.
From the beginning, this whole enterprise of mine, this notion of constructing a new theology from the scraps and fragments of my old one, along with some new wider insights and perspectives, has been about addressing what I think are fundamental questions of any system of faith, questions that are, in fact, central to the human journey. I once believed any faith system worth its salt would address these fairly basic questions: “What is lasting?” and “Where is our hope?” And I guess that’s still valid if we are talking about, say, an academic thought experiment. We could spin those ideas all day long. Such luxury!
But it’s my opinion we are no longer in a time of luxury where we can argue the finer points of theology. We now find ourselves in a time of ultimate seriousness with regard to what the Christian faith might mean in our country and in our lives. With the drumbeat of Christian Nationalism growing louder by the day (it’s pure, cynical golden-calf idolatry, I said what I said), I feel pressed to discern what is utterly essential.
For me, a theology that doesn’t have love at the center,1 as the gravitational pull on everything that we say and do, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If a theology isn’t about the business of showing us how to make everything better, why bother? Really, what’s the point?
We are in times that demand something beyond mere academic postulations, something granular and meaty.
Which brings us to the Incarnation.