Page 135 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 23

The third conversion (to the world) speaks of loving the created world and
its consistent signposts back towards God. Werner is clear that God made
all of crea�on and therefore its design and purpose is perpetually tangible.
Par�cularly, Werner urges four things. First, to no�ce how imperfec�ons
aren’t pleasant and invoke our longing for sa�sfac�on and beauty. Second,
people’s longing for inclusion, acceptance and love points to good
creaturely need. Third, striving and searching demonstrates the rich
purpose we were designed to fulfill. Fourth, gi�s and fulfillment illuminate
the goodness of what God is about and what he has prepared for us.
Cri�cally, through these four reali�es we can learn to accept the world as it
is, naming the tensions, and learning what they expose about us, rather
than just trying to intellectually wrestle ideas of God to the ground hoping
they produce faith. It is the real world a�er all. God didn’t make or put us in
a ‘spiritual only’ world. Life with its longings is interwoven—they make
sense. The ques�on is, can our ‘hard thoughts’ about God that we learn
from specific experiences and people s�ll hold in the light of all of life’s
complexi�es? O�en our thoughts are expanded or challenged if we dare
look at life on its holis�c terms. Life with others and engaged in new ac�vity
teaches us new things. Are we willing to explore it all?

When loving engagement and diverse earthly reality bumps into
precondi�oned ‘hard thoughts about God’, the hard thoughts may actually
be challenged. Of course, hard thoughts can be ra�fied if the community or
the life lived is bound in myopic or misguided narra�ves. Will we dare to
hold truth next to community, community in the world, and the world
against truth and no�ce how the three fold conversions might intertwine,
and experien�ally and deeply teach us ‘good thoughts about God’. Pray with
me for a moment, “Father, show us yourself in your words, your people, and
your world, that we might have ‘good thoughts’ about you that enliven us
to invite ‘good thoughts’ in others. Amen.”

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