I think it’s foolish to presume we can understand Jesus if we don’t first of all understand Trinity. We will continually misinterpret and misuse Jesus if we don’t first participate in the circle dance of mutuality and communion within which he participated. We instead make Jesus into “Christ the King,” a title he rejected in his lifetime (John 18:37).
Humans are more comfortable with a divine monarch at the top of pyramidal reality. Circles are much more threatening than pyramids are, at least to empires, the wealthy, or any patriarchal system. So we quickly made the one who described himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29) into an imperial God, both in western Rome and eastern Constantinople.
What if we actually surrendered to the inner Trinitarian flow and let it be our primary teacher? Even our notion of society, politics, and authority—which is still top-down and outside-in—would utterly change. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:13) should be our circular and all-inclusive ecology. From the very beginning of creation we see this pattern: God the Father, Christ the Word, and the Holy Spirit as a mighty wind (see Genesis 1:1-3).
Trinitarian theology says that spiritual power is more circular or spiral, and not so much hierarchical. It’s here; it’s within us. It’s shared and shareable; it’s already entirely for us and grounded within us. God’s Spirit is planted within each of us and operating as each of us! Let’s not keep looking to the top of the pyramid.
The Trinity shows that God’s power is not domination, threat, or coercion. There’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power and the letting go of autonomous power.
There’s no seeking of power over in the Trinity, but only power with—a giving away, a sharing, a letting go, and thus an infinity of trust and mutuality. This should have changed all Christian relationships: in marriage, in culture, and even in international relations.
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