What's the deal with tongues? In this article, Jesse Medina recounts his experience in an Assemblies of God church with a high value on speaking in tongues. But what about the weirdness? Can we throw tongues out altogether? Read and Interact
How Should We Understand the Trinity?
Posted By Anonymous on/at 11:13 PM
Written by Jesse Medina
I’ve heard it said that back in the day when God first started revealing himself to people – you know, Noah, Abraham, Moses – that people thought it was non-sense that anyone would believe in one god. Supposedly, most folks practiced polytheism and had a god for everything (this is not the same as how many Christians think there’s a spirit/demon for everything).
The Jewish people were unique in that sense. And then Jesus came along and exploded everyone’s heads – and by “heads” I mean “conceptions of God.” He started walking around equating himself with God. Of course, to the Jews, this was highly offensive, they knew there was only one God…and Jesus wasn’t very god-like. I mean, he wasn’t semi-transparent. He didn’t have eagle wings. He didn’t sometimes act like the smoke monster. Oh, and he had a body, a human one.
Apparently the Jews think that automatically excludes someone from being God…haters.
And then there’s the Holy Spirit who at one point did have wings (albeit of a dove).
So you have the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit – and the early church says they compose one God. One in three, three in one. Mysterious. Beautiful. Incomprehensible.
But Christians don’t like that crap, so we began to think up how it could possibly be. The following are the results of the best amatuer scholarship on this topic.
An Egg
Think about it. You have a shell, a yolk, and some white stuff. Maybe God’s like that. Obviously, God is the shell because he’s white. The Holy Spirit could be the white stuff because he’s (she’s?) semi-transparent. Okay, the Holy Spirit is not semi-transparent, but just flow with me, here. And Jesus could be the yolk because…I don’t know…its yellow? Jesus could have been yellow, you don’t know.
Water
Liquid, gas, solid – boom – three in one, one in three. They are all water and, yet, they’re all different.
Us
Body, soul, spirit – that’s what humans are. I’m not entirely sure how our soul is different from our spirit, but I know that a lot of Christians think so. Problem with this theory: it doesn’t really translate since these three supposed parts of a human can’t operate separate from each other.
Speaking
I got this one from an old college professor (old in that he is no longer my college professor, not that he was old). It goes like this: God is the man who speaks, the word he speaks is Jesus and the breath with which he speaks is the Holy Spirit. At the time this one definitely beat the others.
But I’ll be honest, I’m over all this trying to understand the trinity business. Why does it even matter? And if we believe God is actually God, we can affirm, without much difficulty, that we can’t really understand everything about Him. So maybe we should just confess that we really don’t understand, but that we believe it nonetheless.
No?
What do you think? Have you heard other ways of understanding the Trinity? Which do you think is the best? Should we even be concerned with this? Why or why not?
Logging you in...
taylorphillips 16p · 778 weeks ago
in a christian doctrines course last semester, we discussed some of these and other analogies when we arrived at pneumatology. one i hadn't been introduced to before was the trinity as an apple, which was in this children's book:http://www.amazon.com/3-1-Picture-Joanne-Marxhaus...
interesting stuff, huh?
kaikunane 65p · 778 weeks ago
I would compare arguing about the Trinity to arguing about predestination - we're not going to understand it this side of heaven and it's not the point. We're called to be an example of Christ to others, care for the sick, feed the poor and share the good news. Arguing about who will or won't be saved isn't mentioned in the Great Comission.