You might remember a while back I asked you this simple question: What is your good news? You can reread that post now with its focus being on the plural ‘you’ of church.
The Very Good Gospel here represents my recent reading of Lisa Sharon Harper‘s awesome book by that title. If you have the opportunity, pick yourself up a copy and read it with some friends. Each chapter concludes with reflective exercises and/or questions for you to ponder in application of what you just read. Beyond that, each chapter will challenge you in your consideration of the ‘good news’ in most arenas of doing life.
I have been on a bit of a bent for a number of years over the connection between what I knew as the word ‘gospel’ and God’s desire for ‘shalom’ throughout Scripture. Evangelicalism has struggled with this concept for some time as many have isolated the ‘good news’ as a personal decision apart from how it affects all relationships. I used to spend a lot of time as a youth pastor talking about the ‘vertical’ relationship we need to work on in order to learn how to apply it to our ‘horizontal’ connections. In other words, you were to accept Jesus, then treat this relationship as a separate work from how Jesus might interact with everything you come into contact with. OK, that was a little oversimplified, but it serves the point.
When I discovered the term, ‘God’s shalomic imagination’, it stuck with me. And it drives much of how I reconsider my waking moments.
A few things that really connected with me from Harper’s book:
God does not start with the Fall, he starts with the goodness of Creation.
The priestly poem of the creation narrative (Genesis 1) concludes with the sentiment that God saw it all as ‘very good’. Not just good, but that it was very good. She does a great job of unpacking that this very good is not just an expression of delight, but it is in fact, emphatic. Even forceful! Meaning that no matter what lay ahead, the desire was that the good would be evident, and that it may have to be forced into being. God’s shalom is a work of completion, and his desire for this work, is that all things would be brought to completion. Which means…
Our being in God’s likeness is a place of purpose for the shalomic activity in this world.
And shalom is represented for this time and the next. We may not see its completion in our time on earth.
For many traditions the mistake is in allowing the imagery of the ‘fall’ to colour the entire transformative work of God throughout the history of humanity. Looking at the 2 points above we can see the story of redemption from a new and purposeful perspective: Walking with the God of good things who continues directing people to this place of goodness. Why is this so good? Because the focus is not on the falling, it is on the lifting, the healing, the restoring, and the reason for being from the start. It provides hope for what God desires of humanity.
Starting with the ‘very good’ moves us from being individuals looking for a personalized ‘clean up’ to our lives, which many have normalized. Instead, we see a calling to be the people we were created to be, in His image, involved in His good work.
How do you see this very good gospel changing your outlook?
Want some more?
Check out this conversation with Lisa about her book, from the good folks at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology:
Discover more from Eric Friesen
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