The Trinity pt. 2: The Incarnate Son

Jesus saves us from our puny imaginations. Theologically, this is what we need assistance with: Not seeing God from within our own crap.

The story of our crap is a long and complicated one. Most of it begins in childhood. We all know that children are vulnerable and susceptible to the attitudes, words and habits of their parents and caregivers. This is a grievous fact. We will mess up our kids, on some level. We're messed up. They're messed up. It's a perfect combination for inducing all matter of anxiety, attachment problems, defense mechanisms, maladjustments and other psychology words.

When these messed up people think about God, who transcends time and space and neurobiology, they do so from within their mental and emotional funk. I'd venture to guess that's why many Christians and non-Christians don't like God. I mean why would we? He's always out to get us, hunting for wrongdoing, spying on our secrets, and making us feel all warm and gooey guilty inside. But is this true or it is just the funk talking?

We've received Adam's mind, every last one of us. The dude messed up. Ate some forbidden fruit, screwed things up. And that hiding, fearing, blaming, shaming stuff that plagued his personality has swallowed humanity whole. We live in this mind naturally. We're quite comfortable in it. And it's often exacerbated in childhood.

This is where Jesus comes in.

Instead of heaping more shame upon us and burdening our existential load with additional anxieties about the state of our own souls, he hands out grace, freely, as if he's happy about it, as if he's happy. In Jesus, humanity is given the one who fulfills our deepest longings and dissipates our most enduring fears. He lets us go, makes us students and then siblings, takes our crimes and separation upon his own body and mind. In Jesus, we have the revelation of revelations, he and God are one. Seeing Jesus is seeing God, the Father, Abba. And this Father's free grace sets free the wild horses of the soul free. Jesus opens up our theological imagination. Perhaps God isn't the "god" I see from within my crap.

We love it and feel unbound. It invigorates for a time. But what's up with these lingerings doubts? The thought-projects of certain goofball theologians creep over us as we try and rest in God's good hands. Are God and Jesus really one? Old questions reignited. Old dragons reappear. We're afraid there's a hidden split in God. We're afraid that when Jesus said he and the Father are one that he actually, secretly meant they are two.

Next post we will tackle Arius and his heretical spawn.