Trading Transactions

Sometimes life feels so transactional. Everything is based on exchange, everything has a specified cost, everything is an event. Every meeting has goals, a set amount of time, and specific function. We plan and organize life as though every part of our existence is transactional, an exchange of one thing for another. I have become such a consumer that every aspect of my life has been permeated with a consumeristic worldview. I move from one transaction to another, but I struggle to live out the dynamic story God is calling me into.

Even theology has been invaded by this pervasive view. Substitutionary Atonement: we owed something, God paid it (which is a true statement but it is only a piece of the full reality). There was an event where one thing was exchanged for another, and we get life instead of death. We confess a sin and it is forgiven. But is that the way forgiveness and redemption work, is reconciliation with God an event, an exchange, a static reality. Or is forgiveness a way of speaking of the dynamic relationship we have with God. Does forgiveness speak of a moment, an event, an action OR does it speak of a new form of existence, a new stance God takes in relationship with us and all of creation. On the cross was a price paid or was a new kingdom established where evil was overthrown by a good king who chose the way of suffering.

I have heard so many sermons and read so many books that laid out steps to be taken, as though at the end of those steps was a place at which you arrived. I guess what I am saying is that maybe we need to focus on how to walk, rather than the steps we take. That maybe grace and forgiveness are not events but redefining, radical statements about who we are and who God is. Jesus is the resurrection and the life, HE IS - not he did or accomplished. Redemption is not the peak at which we arrive and then remain, it is a river which eternally washes downstream further into the depths and beauty of God's love. The Kingdom of God is coming and it is a movement I want to be caught up in.