Why Another Blog?

Why am I adding to nearly infinite numbers of blogs out there? Haven’t we had enough? Isn’t it time to surrender? Doesn’t the Bible say something about the making of many books which has no end? Yes, Solomon wrote that in Ecclesiastes 12:12. Doesn’t it also say that where there are many words transgression is nearby as well as a command to keep words to a minimum because a fool’s voice comes with many words? Yes it does, those are found in Proverbs 10:19 and Ecclesiastes 5:3.

Yes the Bible says all those things and whether or not we’ve had enough remains to be seen. So hopefully I will restrain myself and keep the foolish words to minimum.

I’m starting this blog to help sort through the issues of what it means to be a part of God’s people in the 21st century. I wish the title rhymed better than it does but it hit me like a flash and stuck. The words came to me one night as I stared at the ceiling pondering some things that I thought were missing and disconnected between God, my life and how I respond to God. Those things fell into three simple, yet interrelated categories.

First, we all have a background story that helps determine where we’re coming from and the shape of our lives. This is true for us as individuals and as corporate entities like big business or the Church. Yet our society tends to leave the past in the dust. Maybe it’s just me, the history buff and college history major, but the old axiom seems quite true, “those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” Thus the past includes the present as it shapes what we observe in the events of the world around us. I’m hoping to explore some of that personal and corporate history in the Church as part of this blog. This is History.

Second, we live in a world that increasingly calls itself post-modern, presuming that we have moved beyond the modern world. In fact, I think the case could be made that we are living in modernity 2.0. Whereas modernity was marked by a search for logical, linear, and rationalistic answers to life’s questions, post modernism claims to have moved beyond that search to claim there are no logical, linear or rational answers to life’s questions. Both seem to appeal to a mindset that appeals to absolutes grounded in human thinking.

Would it not be better to adopt some humility and admit that absolutes are best grounded in God who is both knowable and unknowable by our finite minds? He is knowable to the extent that He has revealed Himself. He is unknowable in that we cannot fathom His fullness with our finiteness. There is always more to God than what we can see. This is Mystery. I’m hoping to use this blog to explore what it would means to seek God in all of His transcendent mystery.

Finally, knowing God, even in part, requires some kind of response from us. We were meant to know God not just intellectually or rationally, but in three-dimensions. The case could even be made that we were meant to know God in five dimensions, the basic three of this physical universe, plus the dimensions of time and spirit. Responding to God in those five dimensions of life could reasonably be called worship. Worship has many dimensions as well, most obviously what happens in church on Sundays. This is Liturgy. I hope this blog will be a place to learn from a wide-range of worship traditions that would help us all become better worshippers of the one true God every day of the week.

It’s called History, Mystery, Liturgy. I invite you to join this journey with me and I pray God will get the glory for this conversation.