God’s Multi-Generational Plot
I have come to embrace the idea that our beliefs need not be limited to a bulleted list of maxims. The tale of Christianity is one that stretches thousands of years of plot twists, betrayals, failure, and hope that can be told in many ways. Over the past year or so, I have been working to frame it into a summation. It is best conveyed verbally, but here is a stab at what it looks like.
From out of an empty expanse of empty, God spoke creation into being. He formed a good project of beauty and placed humans in the creation of paradise called Eden. Through a temptation from a serpent to desire to be like God, Eve and Adam fell from God’s purpose for them and chose to live their own way. Naked and with God’s project in shambles, they were sent from the garden, and God’s direct interface with them through Heaven was separated from their material planet. People, made in God’s image, no longer had him to directly reflect.
Within one generation, this race began to investigate what knowing what God knows could reveal. The ability to slaughter one’s brother out of jealousy. The desire to rape. The desire to have all of humanity converge into one global empire to ascend to heaven once again. Evil on the mind at all times.
God, a being three-in-one, opted to plot a multi-generational rescue mission for humanity to restore what had been lost at Eden. First, he attempted to start fresh with a man named Noah. Not long after, the plan was derailed. God hit the reset button again, calling a man named Abraham from a frustrating city to move to a new land where he would begin the plot. Abraham believed God, and after much waiting, he and his wife Sarah had a son named Isaac.
Isaac was the son of these fathers of the faith and had Jacob and Esau, twins. After much betrayal in the family, Jacob had the torched passed to him, and in a wrestling match with God, became the father of great nation to come. His 12 kids hated their youngest brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery.
From Egypt, Joseph arose to high political power in a great empire. His brothers and their families moved to Egypt in a famine, and were conscripted as slaves. This family became over a million strong, and out of a giant rush of infanticide, one orphan named Moses was called by God like Noah and Abraham to lead a slave rebellion to go start a new nation. After much miracle working, this nation was delivered by God.
On their journey, God enacted a contract with this new nation to bring good to them, eradicate diseases, and make other nations join in their faith if they would hold up their end of the bargain. Upon claiming their land, this country began a shameful cycle of ignoring God, crying to God for help, and being restored. All the while, prophets were praying and proclaiming that something significant would one day happen.
Hundreds of years of war, prophets, and torture later, God directly intervened in our story. No longer content to watch his creation in disrepair, God injected himself into the womb of a teenage girl who had never had sex to be born as a small child. This child was born into an empire that tolerated no other political system and grew to be a man named Jesus, who never screwed up or screwed others over. He spent three years as a rabbi, proclaiming this plot was coming into its finest hour as a new Kingdom that would collide with humanity’s idea for how to live.
Jesus’ message made him the enemy of a religious system and political empire that could not survive its nature. Love your enemies. Anyone can connect with God regardless of their background. Don’t be angry. Forgive contagiously. These beats create a rhythm that makes all the other music go silent, then the other conductors try to set the concert hall on fire.
To squelch this plot, they devised their own plot to have this King of the Jews assassinated. His sentence for claiming to be the King was capital punishment, and he was executed on a cross. God was dead.
Three days later, this Jesus rose from the dead under his own power. Twelve men had followed him for three years and were now sent to go spread his message with reckless abandon. These Apostles began this message within their Jewish faith, but its luster was so appealing and its motive so pure, it spread to other races and nations.
The same empire that executed Jesus despised this system for proclaiming Jesus as the genuine ruler of the planet. They were often killed, themselves. Generations passed with Christians dying for God’s plot - martyrs for the message.
Today, after many ups and downs, that message has been passed to us like a torch. And one day, this risen King will return to his planet to bring about God’s grand finale. Earth and Heaven will be reconnected to restore God’s creation. Evil and injustice will be eradicated, and God’s original family will be redeemed. From now until that day, we can work to make that restoration a reality by jumping in, discovering Jesus’ message, and sharing the exciting news with others that God hasn’t given up - He’s in the middle of fixing it all.
