What’s going on?
Imagine that you’re inserted into somebody else’s life for a day. You get to do what they do, feel what they feel, love what they love and see things the way they do. I imagine it would be quite an unnerving experience because there would be so much that just wouldn’t make sense. Why do they love that thing so much? Why are they so nervous about that situation? After all, it’s never bothered you before.
One of the reasons I think it would be so confusing is that it would be hard to make sense of what’s going on for them now when you don’t understand what’s gone before. We are all the products of our history.
If this is true on a micro scale, it’s also true at the macro. If you don’t know what’s happened in the life of an individual, it’s hard to understand their current reality. In the same way, if you don’t have an understanding of the origins of humanity, it’s hard to make sense of our collective present reality. We live in a world where we’re trying to make sense of what’s going on. We’re grappling with big issues that affect real people like assisted dying, climate change and gender identity. And it’s even more difficult to talk about these things when we don’t know where we all came from in the beginning.
Last year we began a set of miniseries called ‘Pillars’ where we’re building a framework of the things Christians have always believed. We’ve looked at Scripture, at Trinity, and in two weeks, we’re beginning a series called Origins about creation, humanity and the fall.
If I’m honest, it’s Origins that really started the ball rolling on Pillars itself. Why does it matter that God created the world? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? What really changed in Genesis 3? Why does any of this matter now?
These questions are critical bits of timber in the framework of our faith. They influence every aspect of our lives and yet we rarely talk about them. Our hope and prayer is that as we get the basics in place, we’ll have a far richer understanding of how to follow Jesus in this cultural context and be more prepared to grapple with some of our world’s most pressing questions.
I’m so looking forward to this series. Please pray for us as we prepare and get stuck in when it starts on 16 October.
Much love,
Simon
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