To be human is to be in community. On today’s show Doug talks about how community makes us more human. He looks at why Eve was created last and why there is no such thing as a self-made person. He also talks about his struggles with dyslexia and his calling to be a writer.
The Community of God: A Theology of the Church From a Reluctant Pastor is available through Amazon or this Website
thank you Doug for opening my eyes to the Genesis story, in a way I’ve never seen it before. It is important to maintain that God created humans in His image, as very good. Sure we’ve messed up; but that’s why grace and mercy, God’s great gifts, give us hope: God is willing able to restore us to His image. That’s what prevents despair: that God still wants us to bear His image
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I really like how you discussed the relationship between Adam and Eve: that Adam could never know the love that the members of the Trinity had for each other if he remained solitary. Also an important them throughout the Scriptures, it seems, is sacrificing self-sufficiency in order to receive eternal life. And eternal life is always in the context of the Kingdom of God, the preaching of the gospel means that the Kingdom of God has come among you, you are invited into the family of God, even into the very Body of Christ.
Furthermore I appreciate how you have adapted the waking of Adam to his incompleteness and his dependency on Eve, to our individualistic society where we have to wake up from the deep sleep of materialistic, individualistic Western culture to know the fruitfulness, the power that only comes through interdependency, the community of God led by the Spirit of God, worshiping God and showing love for God in our love and service to each other. The hard part is seeing the community around us with different lenses: if people have hurt us, we also have hurt others. For me, as someone who tends to isolate, the only way I’m going to participate in community is by faith in God, that as He calls us, He will empower us. But as you say we have to take the next step. Faith is a risk; I have to believe that even if I am hurt in community, by obeying God’s wisdom instead of protecting myself, I have the opportunity to grow spiritually as well as benefit the Kingdom in ways I am not aware of.
Finally, I want to thank you for sharing your experience of dyslexia and how the love and time your parents devoted to helping you breakthrough its limitations on your life , has made you more compassionate and less judgmental toward those who might have lacked love in their early environment and have been stunted since then. I do believe that God can redeem our past, and he uses the believing community to do it, so that as we speak and act the truth in love we become closer to the image of God that we were intended to be.
God created us to need each other, even if we are introspective introverts like me!
I’m glad you are tracking with the heart of what I’m trying to communicate. I love the feedback. Peace!