Fear of Wonder

Posted on June 3, 2024 by me

“Wonder,” I think, always carries with it a sense of questioning. How can you look at anything with wonder, and not be filled with questions? How? What? Why? Who? When? We have all used “wonderful” to describe something we’ve experienced that we thought was great. But is that all? Something wonderful is something beyond our normal experience or expectations. It should invite us to ask what made it so? Why was it beyond ordinary? If you don’t have any questions about something–no sense of wonder about it–can it truly be described as wonderful?

The Fear of Wonder

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to God. As God can certainly be described as wonderful, the process of considering God should invite questions. However, it seems that much of modern Christianity is about having a belief in certainty: That what we know and what we believe is solid and firm, removing any room for doubt or questioning. We can sing about our wonderful God and his wonderful works, but our framework–our theological boxes–prevents any real sense of wonder.

I believe that our boxes limit our view of God, so that our mental picture of God is something less than wonder. We know this God. We’re comfortable with him. I wonder, are we doing God a disservice by not wondering? Are we missing that part of God that invites wonder and questioning? Do we, in fact, limit our ability to glimpse into that sense of wonder that reveals more of God than our little theological boxes can handle?

God is bigger than our boxes

I firmly believe that God is able to handle our wonder, our questioning, and yes, even our doubt. We should not have to fear that God is somehow not capable of dealing with the “realities” of our modern lives, that questions of science and philosophy and history are too much for God. Our theological box might be too small, but God isn’t. Perhaps it’s time to move outside the box and discover a bigger God.

To see God as truly wonderful is to wonder, and we should not be fearful of seeing God as God.

For more on this topic and more, look for my book Unboxing God–An Unevangelical Guide to Christianity, due out this fall from W. Brand Publishing.

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The Pre-Gospel

Posted on May 25, 2024 by me

The first inkling we have that something big is coming down—the pre-gospel, if you will—comes from some angels, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke. First, an angel called Gabriel appears to a young girl named Mary, and gives her some startling news. She is to become miraculously pregnant with a boy she is to name Jesus.

32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32-34)

Okay, so this is pretty major. But wait, there’s more:

 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[d] will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”

I’ve always wondered about the qualification “he will be called son of God.” Does that mean that he really isn’t, he’s just called that? In thinking about this, it occurs to me that he is not the son of God in a human, genetic way. But, “son” is probably the best way to understand it. He will be holy (meaning “set apart”), but also he will have the actual nature of God. We know that later on, Jesus often referred to himself as the “son of man,” which was an Old Testament reference to the coming Messiah; in incarnational terms, he was God who was human-born. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

So first, Mary is told he will be the king of Israel and that he will reign forever. Then on top of that, he will be recognized as being the son of God. Of course, it’s doubtful that Mary grasped all of that at the time, but I’m sure she understood that this was a big, Godly deal. I mean, just the angel appearing indicated that much. 

Looking back from our modern-day perspective, we can notice a couple of things. First, we have the aforementioned “son of God” title. It means something specific to us today, but didn’t necessarily have the same understanding at the time. The next thing we notice is the reference to Jesus’s eternal reign of the throne of David. While we now can seen this referred to Jesus’s personal eternal reign, at the time it was probably understood to reference the reign of the lineage of Jesus, whether literally or metaphorically. The Jews of that time were no stranger to spiritualizing prophecies to make them fit their current realities.

Either way you choose to look at it, this is certainly “good news” that more good news is on its way.

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Unboxing God – Coming this fall

Posted on May 16, 2024 by me

I haven’t been posting much here lately as I’ve been distracted by other projects, including finishing work on my book Unboxing God–An Unevangelical Guide to Christianity, which is being published by W. Brand Publishing. The book is due out this fall, and I will post updates and teasers here along the way.

The book is the result of several years of reading and studying, trying to understand the essence of Christianity as it existed prior to it being morphed into what is commonly referred to as evangelicalism. This book is very personal to me, and I am very excited to be able to share my own road of discovery and wonder.

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What is the gospel?

Posted on January 22, 2024 by me


It has occurred to me that the gospel – the Christian “good news” – has changed over the centuries, so that what many call the gospel today is not necessarily what the authors of the Bible had in mind. One of the things that has stood out for me over the years is that Jesus did not present today’s gospel. He never had an altar call, he didn’t baptize anyone, he only called for a handful of people to follow him, and sometimes he sent them away. Even when he healed some people, he told them not to tell anyone!

So why are we so focused on getting the gospel right? As a Lutheran, I was never trained to “witness” or “lead someone to Christ,” so when I got involved with a bunch of evangelicals I was quite intimidated by the whole thing. It just seemed so complicated. The Four Spiritual Laws, the “Roman Road,” “praying the prayer,” all seemed so regimented. What if I didn’t do it right? After all, people’s souls were at stake!

Now, I realize that this was all a kind of holy superstition, not based at all upon the Good News that Jesus preached (or the Lutherans, for that matter). Jesus even said, “The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’” (Matthew 13:13). Not the methodology recommended by evangelists today. Did any of the people who heard Jesus speak ever die without accepting him as their personal savior? I imagine so. Did the thief on the cross understand the gospel? I doubt it. So what exactly is the good news that Jesus preached, and what are its implications?

Things have, of course, changed since then. Jesus died and rose again, and that changes a lot. But what about the gospel message? Has the essence of that changed? Was it supposed to change? And what are the essentials of the gospel (in other words, what do people have to believe in order to be saved)?

This is what I will try to explore in the coming days, starting with the earliest version of the good news – that proclaimed by the angels – going through the Bible and hopefully down through history to see how we got where we are. It should be an interesting journey; for me, anyway.

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