I recently was on the podcast Intuitive Living, with Echo and Bobby Sullivan. And I was asked about the Church’s Doctrine of the Trinity. God as ‘Three in One’ in the ‘persons’ of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is the Church’s attempt to put together the three references of God as ‘Father (Creator), Jesus as God’s “only” Son, and God as the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. It attempts to explain the mystery of the relationship between the three. As if mystery could or should be explained or understood.

In my 35 years as a Lutheran pastor, I never saw this as making any real difference in how we were living our lives. It was as if the great ‘Three in One’ were off somewhere doing whatever they were doing, and the rest of us were here doing what we do.

The Church’s Trinity often gets us up in our heads. And the mind in and of itself cannot know God. God can only be known through experience. For God is not a Doctrine, but rather a living, spiritual energy of love permeating and animating all that is.

After the podcast I thought of another Trinity that Jesus actually talked about. For him, it was a summary of what was most important in his people’s scriptures and in life. He put together two Old Testament scriptures:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:5  And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Leviticus 19:18

This “Trinity of Oneness”  (Loving God, neighbor, and self) makes all the difference in how we live in this world.

A Trinity that ushers us into a shared, lived experience of:

Knowing God by loving.

 

Knowing that when we love any one of the Three, we are loving the other two as well.

We love God by loving our neighbor and ourselves. For God is within our neighbor and ourselves.

When we love our neighbor, we are loving God and ourselves. For the Three are One “Person.”

When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we are loving ourselves because our neighbor is us.

When we love ourselves, we are loving God and our neighbor.  For God is our essence.

For what flows within all three (in 2023) is Divine Love

 

You are Love,

Pastor Tim Tengblad

timtengblad@comcast.net   As always, I welcome your comments, questions, and thoughts