wow.

it’s been in many ways an overwhelming brain pummeling of just mounds of incredible and transformative information. in other ways, though, it’s been such a refreshing swim in the waters of escape and re-energizing and refocusing. it’s been an opportunity to hear voices of rethinkers and reclaimers. it’s been both mind-blowing and mind-fixing.

typically when i blog, it’s a very free-flowing easy thing. i sit. i write. i’m done. in this case, though, i’ve literally had my editor pulled up for more than an hour, pondering what the best angle was to communicate the experience thus far. i want to tell it all, but i also sense that telling it all would be novel-like instead of blog-like.

so, instead, i’ll try to distill things down to a manageable read by simply focusing on the biggest highlight and “aha” moment of the day.

the “aha” moment today—the mind blowing, transformative, generative moment—came during rob bell’s first talk, the story we’re telling. the fundamental premise was that in order to communicate the story of god effectively, we need to get to the story under the story under the story. we need to get to the true essence of the christian narrative. the explicit hypothesis was

in other words, the order of how we tell the story inherently determines the nature of the content of and subsequent response to the story. so, naturally, one should start at the beginning and end at the end. what’s the beginning? creation. genesis. what’s the end? the apocalyptic revelation of john. omega.

what happens in the beginning? god creates and he calls it good. not only did he call it good, but he blessed it. what we find is a god who creates things that create. god creates trees that are able to recreate themselves. god creates people who are able to recreate themselves. god’s creation, then, become co-creators with god. there is an active participatory physicality to life on earth. god’s actions occur here. on earth. not “somewhere else”. it’s here. there isn’t a separation of spiritual and physical. soil and spirit are one. all things are created “good” and god blessed all things. there’s a created order. god > humans > earth. when things are rearranged, it is disruptive to the order that god created. nevertheless, there is a symbiotic relationship with god and god’s creation.

so, what happens in the end? in revelation 21, we find this:

what happens in the end? the action returns to earth. the ending of the story is here—not “somewhere else”. where does god dwell in the end? here. on earth. the story of god is creating on earth and then drawing people back to him through repentance and redemption and, ultimately, recreating here on earth.

when we begin at the beginning and end at the end, we tell the story the way that it was intended to be told. we tell it the way god tells it.

unfortunately, though, we often don’t start at the beginning. we pick up in the midst of the story and never make it past that. what happens when we start in the middle of the story?

if you look at genesis 3, you find the story of the fall and the separation and depravity. sin enters the picture. but what do we know about sin if we read the story starting at the beginning and ending at the end? we know it’s temporary. it’s not how we started and it’s not how we’ll end. while sin is something to be taken very seriously, it isn’t the ultimate narrative. it isn’t THE story. it’s god creating and recreating here on earth where sin isn’t a part of the story.

so, what are the implications of a genesis 1 story versus a genesis 3 story?