Continuing from yesterday’s post –

“However we may view creation, it strikes me as contrary to both reason and faith to argue that it is concluded.

Is it not somehow shortsighted to raise up an eternal omnipotent creator – and not give him anything to do since day six? Shoould not an everlasting creator be somewhere lasting and creating? And if, indeed, human life was made ‘in a Creator’s image,’ given a timeless, boundless creator, is there a better place to see the creator at work than ‘in those likenesses’?

To me it follows that Christianity, if it wants to keep in touch with the Creator, must provide a home for all that is – and all who are – creative, lest Christianity itself wither and drift into irrelevance.

Is it possible that Christianity in our time may have become so preoccupied with the door-prizes attendant upon the Divinity of Christ – that it has not nearly fathomed the humanity of Jesus?

What if the ‘Son of God’ were in truth the ‘Son of Man’? What heresies or truths lie hidden within this scriptural identity? What does it mean that he who is hailed as ‘Redeemer/Intercessor/Messiah/The Way/The Truth/and The Life’ was in the beginning seen as ‘Emmanuel/God/in/us’? Is there any possibility that the emphasis upon the God-hood of the Son of Man, to the exclusion of the Man-hood of the Son of God, affords a blanket of endless bliss in preference to a hair-shirt of resonsibility? Knowing that the Gospels do, in fact, attest to Jesus’ awareness of his very special relationship to what he called ‘the Spirit’ and ‘the Father,’ have we been slow to understand, or unwilling to credit, the confidence with which he reached out to touch the souls of Everyman through Alltime!

These are his words:

‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’ (Mark 10:18)

‘Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.’ (Luke 9:48)

‘My daughter, your faith has made you whole.’ (Mark 5:34)

‘You are salt to the world . . . .’ (Matthew 5:13) ‘You are light for the world.’ (Matthew 5:14)

‘The seed sown on rock stands for those who recieve the word with joy when they hear, but have no root in themselves . . .‘ (Luke 8:13)

‘In very truth I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself . . .’ (John 5:19) I cannot act by myself . . . My aim is not my own will, but the will of him who sent me.’ (John 5:30)

‘You cannot tell by observation when the kingdom of God comes. There will be no saying, Look, here it is! or There it is! For in fact the Kingdom of God is (already?) within you.’ (Luke 17:20, 21)

‘I am not myself the source of the words I speak to you; it is the Spirit dwelling in me doing his work . . . In very truth I tell you, he who believes in me will do what I am doing; and he will do greater things still . . .‘ (John 14:10, 12)

‘When the time comes, the words will be given you, for it is not you who will be speaking; it will be the Spirit . . . speaking in you.’ (Matthew 10:20)

— And when you write your own psalms, plays and poems, when you play or conduct your own symphonies, when you paint your own pictures and mould or chisel your own sculptures, be sure that there are some of us who dearly wish we’d been able to hand you a better Christianity – and a better world – in which to work.” (410-411)

Please let me repeat – with emphasis: “To me it follows that Christianity, if it wants to keep in touch with the Creator, must provide a home for all that is – and all who are – creative, lest Christianity itself wither and drift into irrelevance.”

The Robert Shaw Reader. Edited by Robert Blocker. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.