The following is an excerpt from Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity pg 30-31.
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The God Imagination provides us intriguing clues as to the nature of God’s rule, which the story calls Kingdom. Heaven, which is God’s perspective, and earth, which is the created order, are in harmony with each other. God establishes what feels like an irresponsible level of freedom.
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; (Gen 2:17a)
God designs the freedom to “eat” or consume anything in creation as a fundamental characteristic of the Kingdom. The assumption is that we’re going to explore and imagine, try and seek out. God establishes a freedom that provides an intense level of permission. This idea would later be revisited in Paul’s famous words, “Everything is permissible.” Humanity begins with a framework that is empowering and permission-oriented.
But the story reveals not just by what is there, but also by what is NOT there. The story completely lacks an identifiable basis for human interaction, or what we would describe as moral law. In other words, there is no moral code of any kind. God spends no time defining or revealing complex systems, rules, list of laws, or even a handbook on what it means to live in the world. God originally omits certain things which we would naturally expect to be there because we know the story. It would seem prudent in hindsight for God to provide some basis for human interaction at this point. But God doesn’t. The story contains no tangible or even illusory code of human conduct.
This glaring omission is easy to miss as part of the story. We’re so used to seeing life through the basis of the law we skip right over that part and just assume it exists. But it doesn’t. The Ten Commandments don’t show up for another 2,500 years. The one command God eventually gives to the children of Adam is, “don’t kill each other,” which can almost seem a little irresponsible, given what follows.
It’s easy to ask, “What do you mean God didn’t provide the law?” The natural inclination is to immediately run to the First Command given to Adam and Eve.
And the LORD God commanded the man…“but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Gen 2:17b)
The first commandment provides the context for understanding our freedom. Freedom is informed and governed by the judgment of good. God’s command follows the original declaration of good for all humanity. Our actions are then first defined by an understanding of how each affects all of creation. The only way to corrupt the system is to lose site of the judgment.
If we’re honest, it’s either reckless on God’s part or revealing of something deeper within the context of what is going on. What if God understands that the basis of all human interaction begins with harmony to this single judgment of value? The assumption we can draw from this is that the judgment of value provides the underlying basis for all human relationship and interactivity. If we see life from the God Imagination, as good, our actions are governed by this judgment. If we see God, the self, our neighbors, and even the world as good, we begin to hold it as valuable.
Jesus intimated this in the Great Commandment.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mk 12:30-31)
As long as we remained in harmony with God’s judgment of value, effective social interaction was assumed. As long as we held onto the truth of our dignity, life would remain in harmony. Love was the only defining ethic needed.
The opposite was also true. If we were not in harmony with God’s judgment, if we lost sight of value, then our social interactions would suffer as a result. Technically, we didn’t need a legal construct to tell us when something was wrong, because the fruit of our relationships would reveal it for us.
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Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity explores a profound possibility. What if we’ve misunderstood the Gospel? What if our historical approaches to Christianity have been distorted by the very same problem they are attempting to solve? Available today from CreateSpace and Amazon. Order from CreateSpace and use code 5GFARGT9 to receive a 15% discount.
