Chapter 3: What Jesus Knew: Out God-Bathed World
Re-Visioning God and His World. “Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us.”
God’s Joyous Being. God is full of joy. “So we must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us—through gritted teeth—as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core—which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word love.”
Finding Language to Express This Great God. In modern days, describing God is thought to be impossible. But the psalmists did it all the time.
The Heavens as the Human Environment
Some Advice on Living. The kingdom of God is a safe place to live.
The Heavens Are Also Here. God is here to look after us. Nothing stands between us and God.
Heaven Invading Human Space. In the OT, there are multiple instances of the LORD speaking from heaven God is actually here.
The New Testament Experience. The appearances of God are real, not some psychological mumbo-jumbo
Embarrassing Translations.
The Experience Continues Today. “… the reason the Judeo-Christian witness regards surrounding space as full of God is that that is where it has from time to time experienced him. That is where he has manifested himself. Jehovah naturally became known among the Israelites as “the God of the Heavens” through the progression of their historical experience.”
"Kingdom of the Heavens" and "Kingdom of God”. The two phrases are not synonymous.
Space Inhabited by God.
Spirit and Space. Where God is in space requires understanding what spirit means.
The Human Spirit. “I am a spiritual being who currently has a physical body. I occupy my body and its environs by my consciousness of it and by my capacity to will and to act with and through it. I occupy my body and its proximate space, but I am not localizable in it or around it.” “Now, roughly speaking, God relates to space as we do to our body. He occupies and overflows it but cannot be localized in it. Every point in it is accessible to his consciousness and will, and his manifest presence can be focused in any location as he sees fit.”
God Wants to Be Seen.
The Myth of Empty Space.
All Things Visible and Invisible.
What, Then Is Spiritual Reality? It is nonphysical, the ultimate power, thought, and valuing.
The Centrality of Will and Heart. Every human has a will or will power.
The Substantiality of the Spiritual. “We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. It is what we are suited to. Thus Paul, from his profound grasp of human existence, counsels us, “To fill your mind with the visible, the ‘flesh,’ is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).”
The Human Quandary. “Aldous Huxley remarks, 'Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.’”
A Solution in the "Mind of the Spirit”.
Death Dismissed
Carelessness About Death.
Never Taste Death. “Jesus shows his apprentices how to live in the light of the fact that they will never stop living. This is what his students are learning from him.”
Moving out of Out “Tent” or Temporary House.
The Dual Context of Life in God’s Word.
Which Side is Really UP?
The First Shall be Last and Last First.
The Resistance Built into Our Daily Life. “Just observe how people are taught and certified or judged competent in any of these fields, and you will be staring the flight from God straight in the face.
All of us live in such a world, for we live by our competencies. Our souls are, accordingly, soaked with secularity. In any context in which people are supposed to be smart and informed, even the most thoughtful and devout Christian will find it hard to make a convincing presentation of the relevance of God and his spiritual world to “real life.”
Jesus, Master of Intellect
The Growing Wave of Unfaith. Christianity begin to be seen as irrelevant in the intellectual and cultural world.
The Smartest Man in the World. “… you can be very sure that nothing fundamental has changed in our knowledge of ultimate reality and the human self since the time of Jesus.”
Master of Molecules.
Quotes From: Dallas Willard. “The Divine Conspiracy.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-divine-conspiracy/id3606324in