In Simple Terms

I've been reading the Bible and hearing it taught for about 50 years. It's a very complex book!  But I'm the kind of person who tends to simplify complex concepts into more understandable ideas. So as of today, at least, here's how I see the story of the Bible, in simple terms. 

Before there was anything else, there was God. Not some old man sitting on a throne glaring at people, like some think, but a God who is three in one: the Father-Son-Spirit God. Forever living in perfect harmony and self-giving community, God desired that his love would grow and multiply, so he decided to create a physical universe in which there would be beauty, and living beings who could freely choose to love him too. And because God is non-physical, he also planned to enter this new physical world and become part of it, and so make the physical universe part of himself also: we call that as the Incarnation, where the Son of God took on human flesh and became the Son of Man also, at just the right time. 

Meanwhile, since free choice includes the possibility of negative and hurtful choices humans had inevitably started making hurtful choices (the Bible calls those sin). Those patterns of living led to murder, war and many other harmful acts. When the Son of Man was born, being fully God and fully human, he completely and perfectly followed the will of God all his life -- a Representative of all humanity as we were intended to be. 'Jesus completed us,' is another way of describing it, and because he was both God and human, he also joined us perfectly to God, like blending two colors of clay into one single color. 

But people, being the broken beings they were, got jealous and angry at Jesus and killed him on a Roman cross as a criminal, and put him in a tomb. Because he was fully human, he could die; but because he was fully God, he didn't stay dead -- he rose from the tomb in a really cool body -- still human, but he could do things like disappear and walk through walls! Besides that, as our Representative, when he died, he paid the penalty for all sin for all time. And when Jesus came back from the dead, as our Representative, he made possible life after death, for all of us. 

After appearing to lots of people and teaching them for 40 days, he rose, still in that cool super-human body, to re-join the Father in heaven. Since he is our Representative, Jesus brought that perfect, fully-God and fully-human Person into Godself. Which means, when we think of the Father-Son-Spirit God, we are not at all distant from that God, because our Representative has brought us with him into that same love, harmony and community that God has always been and always will be. It's like one of those signs at the mall says: "YOU ARE HERE" with an arrow pointing to the perfect love of God wrapped around us. And that was the whole plan of God from the beginning, held up by God's love, the core of Godself, as a foundation. And because his love brought us into being, we are secure in that love, in spite of lapses in our behavior. 

OK, you may be thinking, "The world doesn't look all wonderful and lovey today" and you're perfectly right. Because, for one thing, not everybody understands this simple story. --But what if they did? Would we still have war and murder and stealing and oppression? Or instead, would people start treating each other like we all belong HERE? 

If this makes sense, how about telling it to someone else.  Are you with me? Or if it doesn't make sense to you, please comment and tell me how I can explain it better.

p.s. Some of my readers may be protesting that I've left too much out, and that might mean I'm de-emphasizing some important matters. But this is only a summary, after all, and it gives a lot of entry points for discussion of other points. But I believe the overview I've written is true to the Bible and the core of good theology. As I've said before, "God loves you -- Jesus proves it!" And isn't that correct?