Things I Want My Kids To Know #3: Christianity With a Relational Premise

Most Christianity, in this western, twenty-first century culture of ours, is observed under the premise of Hell evasion and Heaven admittance. If the gospel message you have heard is not predicated on heaven or hell, it is undoubtedly touted as some kind of snake oil, magic bullet that can cure all of your anxieties, sicknesses, afflictions, discomforts, financial woes... all for the low, low price of only ten percent of your first fruits. It is not for these versions of the "good news" that God-incarnate, or even a wise man, would die a torturous death to represent; they are not the concepts, through which, my children will understand Christianity.

The after-life was rarely spoken of in the Old Testament, and was, at best, an undeveloped tribal belief. Since the Old Testament comprises most of YHWH believing history, and most of those worshippers were not in it for the beneficial eternal outcome, it seems odd that that is the premise under which we claim allegiance to the same God. The New Testament does speak of the after-life- quite a bit actually, but it is not more emphasized than any other concept. Christianity is not to be understood through the spectacles of self-centered gain, the attainment of personal peace and prosperity is not the quintessence of the belief system that is hashed out in the Old/New Testament writings.

The story begins with God as creator. In a philosophic stroke of genius, God is introduced to the collective psyche of the believing community (through all generations) as the designer who forges our reality, upholds it, and sustains it through His power. Any other proposed God, ancient or modern, simply mirrors mankind; idealized machinations of ours, to serve our interests. This God of the Jews and Christians, however, is the source; He stands outside of us and our reality while interacting with us, His creation, at a personal level. He is YHWH- the center point. The Beyond-Us-In-Character Other whose nature is a constant and absolute point of reference by which we may evaluate all things. It is with this starting point, and only this one, that philosophy has any variety. Any other starting point is hopelessly self-centered. Any other starting point is just existential in the end. The thing that separates Christianity from all else is that creation has the opportunity to respond to the nature of God in obedience. It takes such a God for this to be possible. Obedience is the key out of a self-centered based belief system. Not just any obedience, however, will do. The obedience that the Bible proposes is an obedience that, though it admits negative and positive consequence, is not motivated by punishment or reward. It is a willful, heart-felt subjectivity to the nature of God.

God is creator, He is the center, and He commands. He commands us to love Him with everything we are, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. He commands us to come away from ourselves and to consider Him as other, and those around us as other; He commands us to live in a manner that is not self-centered as a point of reference. The quintessence of all of scripture is relationship; relationship gone bad, relationship repaired, relationship pointed toward eternity. Not just any relationship, however, relationship as God defines it, as he prescribes it, describes it, idealizes it; relationship that is proactively how-it-should-be... the shalomic ideal. Such relationship is both horizontal and vertical, that is, it is in the form of mankind to mankind, and mankind to God. An interesting note here: the Bible has a set pattern. The pattern is this: whenever relationship is right horizontally and vertically, the ecology rejoices. Whenever relationship is broken or functioning in an unhealthy manner, the ecology responds in suffering.

I propose that the whole two trees in the garden business is mankind's departure from a God-centered, taken for granted, assumption-for-paradigm to a self-centered point of reference based paradigm. Adam and Eve ingested- they took into themselves- the new paradigm of assessing their entire reality through the arbitrariness of what they perceived was good and/or evil. They were not partakers of life, but were hoarders of doing things their way and understanding things in terms of what seemed right and wrong to them. God declaring that death would be the immediate repercussion upon the ingestion of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was His declaration that whatever followed their said ingestion was death defined for the rest of the unfolding book. What was described upon ingestion was broken relationship between man and God, woman and God, and man & woman, as the ecology changed for the worse and was at odds (in relationship) to mankind. For the sacred literature of the Judeo-Christian belief, Life = the shalomic ideal. Death = broken relationship.

Sin, in all of its various forms, is the corrosive force, typically enacted by mankind that breaks down relationship. The law demonstrates that corrosion in practical terms. It is a teacher for us. Jesus comes so that relationship can be put back together, both in metaphysical terms and in practicality as he redefined it through word and deed. We are being saved into the shalomic ideal. We relate now temporally, our relating (shalomic idealistically or not) will be carried through some kind of eternity. (I am not sure what is meant by eternal. I have some suspicions... the philosophically developed concept of infinity did not come about until much later in human history).

The Christianity I introduce to my kids is a Christianity where an ultimate creator deity calls us to relate to Him and others in healthy ways, and subsequently the world around is healed. Healing does not come from healing, healing comes from the obedient relating to Him and those around us. My children's inherited Christianity is an other-centered way of thinking and living.