A book about God is a book about everything. No wonder books about God sprawl all over the place: the topic ‘God’ touches every other conceivable topic. Any true thing about God will echo in the fibers of all that God has created.

Me, I have no interest in writing a book about everything. I just want to share how the surprising God I encountered lit up my life and rescued me from despair, and I want to help readers encounter that same God. I don’t want this book to sit on bookshelves as a compendium of Christian theology; I want this book to light readers on fire! Yes, to spread a holy fire, that’s why I’m writing this book, and to spread that fire quickly enough to keep it hot.

So when I look at the piles of books, articles, and notecards stacked wobbly around my office floor, my mouth goes slack and my eyes go vacant. I look at my research and I’m pierced with a paradox: all these collected hot-takes, personal testimonies, wise insights, Bible verses, and clever arguments truly helped guide my discovery, but they are not the discovery itself. They are arrows pointing toward a light, but they are not the light.

What am I saying? Maybe that I don’t want to get lost in a labyrinth of arrows. Trying to introduce people to this surprising God feels like trying to describe Michelangelo’s Pietà by carefully examining the dust and chips of marble on the sculptor’s floor.

Open most academic books about God and you often find one of two toils. Open the first book and you’re accosted by the exhausted jargon of a weary scholar, so entrenched in the same fruitless spirals of argument, so numbed by the same circuitous conversations, that their prose dribble across the page, dull and predictable. These books read how I imagine Israelite food critics would read in the 30th year of eating only manna and quail.

Open another book and you’ll find a different woe. Perhaps antsy to escape those stagnant loops of discourse, other scholars dive deep into minutiae. They pull out their microscopes to probe new depths of nuance—way down in the neglected deep—hoping to find a new clue, a new insight, a new twist which might shine new light on the ancient debates still hammering away far up on the dark surface. These books might explore dead languages from old scrolls, questioning the gender of a preposition, or the curious placement of an accent mark on an ambiguous word. Or maybe they spatter the page with symbolic logic until the whole thing looks like some contrived hieroglyphics that only four people in the known universe can understand. While the authors are clearly smart, and they may even be right, they’re so recondite they leave the reader not knowing why any of it matters.

When you write about God you can get easily stuck in the pedantic gravity of the bookshelf and never achieve orbit, never reach escape velocity. I don’t want to get stuck on those same tired intellectual roundabouts, nor do I want to get lost in the weeds of minutiae. I’m not writing this book to simply share information. I want to open a door for readers to hopefully experience the pervasive hope, purpose, and joy that I’ve experienced these past 30 years. I guess what I’m saying: I want to find the signal in the noise, the melody in the cacophony, and I want that melody to make readers dance, just as the melody has made me dance.

The post Reflections On Writing “Surprising God” appeared first on Dan Kent.

Podcaster Nick Loper once confessed: “I thought I liked cashews, until we got some unsalted ones. Turns out I just like salt.”

A similar epiphany happened to me. I thought I liked theology and Bible study. I downloaded sermons, listened to lectures, and read books-too-big-for-backpacks. I even earned a master’s degree from Bethel Seminary.

Many folks bound into seminary with a song on their lips, only to limp away clinging—if they’re lucky—to a fraction of the faith with which they came.

I didn’t lose my faith in seminary.
My faith grew.

Why I found profit while others found loss, I don’t know. Even basic explanations come out sounding patronizing, or like humble-bragging.

Say I point to a simple and impersonal truth, like: seeking God is hard. Notice how this implies that my success came from superior effort: I worked hard enough to overcome the challenge. And notice how this also pins failure to insufficient effort of those others: they were not up to the challenge.

But none of that is true. I doubt I worked harder than anyone.

Me, I blame seminary itself. I don’t mean Bethel Seminary—which I adored—I mean seminary in general. Seminary is doomed to disappoint. You pass through the doors expecting a lively journey, but instead you encounter cryptic scriptures, tedious commentaries, and abstruse debates about how the shape of an accent mark might affect translation. You Betty-Boop into the room expecting a path of rapturous light, but instead it feels like hours and hours of milking flies.

I thought I liked theology. It turns out I just like finding God. I like the gust of relief when I disarm a menacing doubt. I like the swell of euphoria when I comprehend why the good news is actually good—and why it’s actually news. I like the boost of conviction when I come to trust more and more the promises of God.

One promise in particular stokes my levity most. Paul tells the Corinthians:

“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’.” (2 Corinthians 6:16)

I carried this charming promise with me into seminary. God will dwell with us. We’ll hear him approaching in the cool of the day. We’ll know what we know by pure perception—no Bibles, no theology. Immediate and intimate observation, little more. That charming promise kept tickling me and nudging me throughout my seminary studies.

It also kept my expectations sober. A promise is a pending thing. “God will dwell with us.” That moment still hangs somewhere out of reach, up in the air. We’re not yet there.

For now, while we wait for that great day, our work is more constructive than observational. We build our picture of God in the workshop of our minds. We each cobble together a forensic sketch from imperfect sources. We go to the gospels and study the wild testimonies of unexceptional people, written in languages few of us know. We debate our perspectives with fallible scholars and we propound our pictures against theirs.

Yes, we have the Holy Spirit, but we must strain to hear his whispers and soft guidance. And all of this we do in a world that looks far more demonic than godly.

I’m surprised we find any traces of light at all.

I carry on because I know this work is not the thing itself. I do not expect rapturous light or euphoric theophanies.

I carry on knowing that anything we find on a path toward a great promise will always thump dull relative to our expectations of what’s to come.

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Step out in search of free will and you encounter many traps.

Say you make the astute claim that something free must be something uncaused. The way you see it, if something is predetermined it cannot be free. If we witness a free act, we must be witnessing something that has no prior cause.

As reasonable as this seems, and as dapper as the logic might appear, it turns out false. If I make a free choice, then I *caused* something. And so there most certainly is causation in free will, it’s just that *I* am the cause—not my brain, not my values, not my personality, but *me*.

What do I mean by *me*?
What do I mean when I say: “I caused something”?

Guided by the concierge of common sense, all I can really mean by *me* is this physical instantiation of myself.

My body.

So then clever folks are likely to launch their probes at the physical self: where does this physical thing, the body, enact its causes? As of this writing, the brain remains the top candidate for inquiry. But what part of the brain?

At this point you begin to suspect you’ve been lulled into a trap. When looking at a material thing, all you can see is a chain of events—that is, you see determinism. The absolute best thing you could hope for, when peering into your microscope, would be to witness something happen that shows no regard to any chain of events around it—that is, you see indeterminism.

And now you know for sure you’ve been trapped, because neither of these possible outcomes—determinism or indeterminism—are free will.

Something determined is not free, and neither is something un-determined. A free choice is not determined by the chain-of-events—even of the brain. It’s determined by *me*. A free choice is also not un-determined, because that would just be randomness. But when I make a free choice, I *determine* something.

The bait of this trap sits back in the lap of common sense, the cogent claim that “all a person can really mean by *me* is this physical instantiation of ourselves.”

For free will to be true, this common sense claim must be false. In other words, given the harsh binary of matter, between determinism and indeterminism—neither capable of yielding free will—the only way out of the trap is to consider a more classic hypothesis: we are each more than matter. In other words, free will requires dualism. It requires something more than brains, bodies, neurons, or microtubules.

This solution comes with its own basket of problems, I know, but it’s the only way.

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“Seek the Lord.”

That imperative is found over a hundred times in scripture.

Why so often?

For one thing, finding God is not easy.

Not because God is a construct, but because God is not a construct.

God is the very real treasure, found by those who truly seek (Proverbs 2:4-5).

God wants to be found, not constructed.
In fact, God sets himself against all of our constructions (Jeremiah 10).
God wants to be found, but on God’s terms, not on ours.

In Exodus 3:13, Moses asks God: “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”

God replies: “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Names held meaning in the ancient world. So by asking God his name, Moses was asking what construct best applied to God.

God was having none of that. “I am who I am.”

This is not to say God is pure mystery, or anything like that. No, we call the Bible “revelation” for a reason: God is revealed.

• God is love (1 John 4:8)
• God is light (1 John 1:5)
• God is faithful (1 Corinthians 1:9)
• God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4)
• God is good (Nahum 1:7)
• God is compassionate (Psalm 145:8)
• God is holy (Isaiah 6:3)

Each of these revelations about God mean something constructive, but they are not mere constructions. They are constructs that point to a being who dwells beyond the scope of their demarcation.

We’re told again and again to seek God because we can all fall easily into a lazy groove of comprehension, mentally affirming this-or-that concept of God, while never seeking God himself.

👆 Please read this as a confession.👆

Thirty-five years into my quest for God, I still feel like God is distant. My ideas about God are ample, and I hold them with great conviction. My experiences of God are rare, and I hold the sweet memories of those encounters with nagging suspicion.

Still, I trust that God is more than a construct—in fact, God is the antithesis of construct: God is fundamental reality. God is not only real; God is the realest. And I trust that one day God will dwell with us again in that embodied presence—the same one with which he once dwelled with his disciples.

I don’t know Deepak Chopra, and I don’t know if he did anything sexual with the girls on Epstein’s island. Some who have shared the email-screenshot I shared below also included a picture of Deepak doing the upward-facing dog yoga pose. This seems intended to suggest sexual impropriety.

“Unfair,” I say! Most yoga poses are pseudo-erotic. Heck, I do yoga almost every day, but I refuse to begin until I’m sure nobody else is around. So shame on anyone who includes this picture!

Still, in this context, his comment that “cute girls are real,” seems prurient at best.

I hope his comment was just a slip. I truly hope it was simply a case of Deepak giving himself over to the carousing spirit fostered by Epstein.

I’ve been there. I’ve been around important and powerful people, and I’ve been around them when they’ve been up to no good. I know the gravity and peer pressure they emit, pressure to give yourself over to their revelry. And I know I have succumbed to that pressure, and I’ve said things I wish I hadn’t, things for which I had to repent.

I hope that’s the case for Deepak. I do. I hope that for him because those girls are made in God’s image. They also exist beyond the arbitrary construct of their flesh. They are each irreducible to their bodies. They each carry the breath of God within them. They are each worth Jesus suffering and dying on the cross for.

To treat a treasure of such immeasurable value as if it were a mere construct for sexual gratification, well, I cannot comprehend such woe.

I say “woe” because—when the “I am” returns, and
when we see for certain that God is not merely a construct, and
when we see that God’s love for those cute girls was not merely a construct, and
when we see that God’s goodness and justice are not mere constructs,
woe to those who disregard God’s moral mandates,
woe to those who disregard their own consciences as they blithely exploit God’s children,
woe to them all—because who can withstand the weight of such depravity under the gravity of God’s real and perfect holiness?

The post Deepak Chopra Says God is a Construct appeared first on Dan Kent.

Timothy Keller argues that the story of Joseph in the Old Testament is about God’s control. Dan argues that the story is more about Joseph’s control. What do you think?

Episode 46
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Listen on Spotify:

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YouTube Channel: Surprising God

Dan’s books:
Confident Humility
The Training of KX12

Send Questions To:

Twitter: @SurprisingGod
Facebook: SurprisingGod
Twitter: @thatdankent

The post What is the Story of Joseph Really About? appeared first on Dan Kent.

Calvin says God does everything, and everything that happens is because God brings it about. God never rests. But Sabbath is to rest, and we are told God rests. How can a God who does everything rest? Dan discusses…  

Episode 45

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Listen on Spotify:

__ __ __

YouTube Channel: Surprising God

Dan’s books:
Confident Humility
The Training of KX12

Send Questions To:

Twitter: @SurprisingGod
Facebook: SurprisingGod
Twitter: @thatdankent

The post Is Open Theism the Only View that Makes Sense of Sabbath? appeared first on Dan Kent.

The Book of Revelation begins with an angel telling John: “Do not be afraid.” But then the angel goes on to pummel John with one terrifying vision after another.

How do you explain this? Is John a fraud? He says not to be afraid, but then he paints, in great detail, many scary threats.

That’s the first question I tried to answer in my sermon “Crowns, Not Crutches.”

Ultimately, John does want us to be afraid, but he wants us to fear the right things. We tend to fear the wrong things. We run up the mountain to avoid the tsunami only to be buried by avalanche.

So, what does John want us to fear? That’s the second question that fueled my sermon prep.

John’s Point

John’s point is that we should not fear what this world can do to us, or even what the Beast might do to us. Instead, we should fear God. That is, we should fear our own unfaithfulness to God. We should fear our own betrayal to Christ Jesus, and we should fear our own neglect of his teachings.

That’s a legitimate fear because faithfulness to Jesus isn’t easy, especially here and now in our modern polarized era, in this arena of angry influencers, of manipulative talking heads, of professional conflict-entrepreneurs with their mic-drop political takes, their belittling internet memes, their mastery of mockery, their gourmet skill at ridicule. The journey Jesus calls us to is a richer, slower, deeper journey.

Everything Jesus offers looks like a wet sock compared to the dancing shoes of rhetoric and propaganda we see all around us. I understand the temptation to discard the slow growing fruit of Jesus’s teachings and dive into the fructose of our current culture-war ethos.

• Paul tells us to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave us” (Ephesians 4:32), but now we see Christians demonstrating little compassion for people, people who merely vote differently—even though the true impact of a single vote is the statistical equivalent of a gnat pissing on a forest fire.
• We see Christians using whatever rhetorical tactic they can find to tear others down, all while Paul instructs us to build one another up (1 Thessalonians. 5:11).
• We see Christians saying vile things about others even while Paul instructs us to “avoid godless chatter” (1 Thessalonians 5:22).
• We seem stuck in current events and consider everyone from a worldly point of view, even though that’s exactly what we’re told not to do (2 Corinthians 5:6).
• We’re great at “exposing fruitless deeds of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11), but then we cannot seem to keep ourselves from engaging in unwholesome talk about the perpetrators of those deeds (Ephesians 4:29).
• Perhaps we’re patient with some, but we’re certainly not “patient with all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14).
• We let the anxiety of politics rob us of the “peace of Christ” that should “rule in our heart” (Colossians 3:15).
• Instead of filling our conversations with grace and salt (Colossians 4:6), we fill it with labels, judgment, and amateur diagnoses.
• We’re great in the easy unity of agreement, but in the face of disagreement, we’re not good at “making every effort to maintain unity” (Ephesians 4:3).
• We’re good at “reject every evil” that we see in people (1 Thessalonians 5:22), but terrible at “holding on to what is good” in people we disagree with (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

So those are some of the themes that went into this sermon. I hope you get a chance to hear it.

Writing this sermon was a fight, but it somehow came together better than I thought it would. You can listen to it HERE: “Crowns, Not Crutches.”

The post Trading Crutches for Crowns appeared first on Dan Kent.

The love passage of 1 Corinthians 13 says that love means to trust. Some translations say love “believes all things.” Why the different translations? Which is right? What difference does it make? Dan discusses…  

Episode 44

Sermon: Love Trusts

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__ __ __

Listen on Spotify:

__ __ __

YouTube Channel: Surprising God

Dan’s books:
Confident Humility
The Training of KX12

Send Questions To:

Twitter: @SurprisingGod
Facebook: SurprisingGod
Twitter: @thatdankent

The post Does Love Trust All Things, or Believe All Things? appeared first on Dan Kent.