Who is God?

Any attempt to create a theology must begin with one question: who is God? It is the premise upon which the entire rest of the religion is founded. It is the cornerstone of the rest of one's belief, for what one understands of God in turn dictates how he/she perceives the rest of the faith. With that in mind, let us begin.

First and foremost of God's attributes is His perfection. It is a sort of holistic perfection the manifest itself in everything about Him. He is perfectly (x). In fact, the only limit that God has is this perfection, for it is the only kind of limit that could apply to the Most High God.

You se, perfection implies goodness, and if God is perfectly good, He cannot, by default, be bad. If we then look at any of the traits He may be said to posses, we can extrapolate this good/bad dichotomy. God is not just just, He is perfectly just. and if He is perfectly just, than He cannot in any way, at any time, in any place be unjust. God is perfectly loving, and to that end, He can never be unloving. This applies to literally every aspect of His nature.

Now, there are so many traits to list about God that to endeavor to write them all would be foolhardy, so I will instead tackle those I deem to be most relevant, important, and most frequently encountered. Also understand that, as I said above, His perfection is implicit in each of these.

God is just. When God makes a promise, it will be kept. This goes both ways, also. God promised Solomon that he would be a king without equal, and it was so. Likewise, God promised Adam and Eve that if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, "[they] will surely die", and when they did, He kept His word. People like to assume that God's justice is their ally, there to avenge them in their time of need, but too often they forget that it is we who must ally with Him. His justice punishes evil as much as it rewards good.

God is loving. This seems to be almost contradictory to the first attribute we have discussed, but in fact His love stems from His justice, for without punishment, there can be no mercy. Without adversity there can be no kindness. Without wrath, there cannot be love. God's love is the result of His righteous fury at the defiling taint of sin in His prized creation, us. Knowing as He did how we had corrupted ourselves, His immediate reaction was to guide history so that we might be redeemed. When faced with rebellious children, His thought was "how can I save them". This ultimate love supersedes everything. We like to think that, if God truly loves us, He'd not let anything ever go wrong for us. Our culture is full of people whose parents have tried that, and we can see where that has led both them and their children. To avoid punishing wrong does not create love. In many ways, it destroys it.

God is powerful. Consider the sun. It is a ball of liquid fire, thousands of times the size of our planet. n it's core churns millions of atomic explosions thousands of times more powerful that the most powerful bombs known to man. It's heat and light are so immense that they can be felt here, 93 million miles away form it (if you drove 1000 miles an hour, it would take you more than 10.5 years to reach it). Yet astronomically speaking, our sun is a small star. There are stars thousands of times larger than ours. And God created all of these simply by speaking. The sound of thunder, the fury of a hurricane, the mighty mountains that rise up from the earth and the canyons that scar our world's face are all products of His divine imagination. And he created them all with no more than the words of His mouth. The magnitude of God is evident in everything, and the immensity of His mind is even more so. The equations that govern how galaxies rotate also apply to particle physics. This is a truly astounding picture of God's immense power.

God is merciful. Despite essentially spitting in His face, God wants our salvation. No matter how badly we screw up, God is willing to listen and forgive. God upholds His divine law with one hand, and with the other He reaches down to wipe the tears from the eyes of those who call out to Him for help. One need look no further than the plan of salvation to see exactly the depth of His mercy. Christ went to the sick, the lame, the dying, the poor, the broken, and the desperate with His message of love and mercy. Those whom no one else loved or cared for are the ones He went to first. When others saw this, some realized what this meant, but others rejected Him. Still, God continued to reach out to all who would listen. Paul the apostle was originally Saul the Christian-killer. Fueled by religious zeal, Saul hunted down and persecuted all the Christians he could find, until God intervened directly, and Saul's life was never the same again. No matter what we do, God "is faithful and just to forgive our sins" if we are willing to "confess our sins". Considering how often we do what is wrong, it is amazing that He would have mercy on us.

God is the creator, the redeemer, the Sovereign and Most-High God of all. "In Him, all things are held together" and without Him, all things would cease to exist. He is eternal, loving, strong, creative, mighty, just, and merciful. He is, was, and shall always be God. And it is to Him we look for all the answers in our lives.

What is this blog about?

This blog is going to be a vehicle of discussion for me. I have, for many years now, wanted to attempt to create a holistic theology for life. But what exactly does that mean? Well, I believe that faith in Christ is something that should impact the whole of your life. Not just that you pray or go to church, but that it really leaves a deep impact on who you are and how you act. So to that end, I want to create a theology that dictates a lifestyle of Christ-likeness.

"Wow, that all sounds well and good, but I have no idea what that means or looks like! Examples please!" Well, for starters, the Knight-Orders of the Crusades are excellent examples. The Knights Teutonic and Hospitaller, for example, had a theology that emphasized caring for others, and so they went to great lengths to create hospitals and clinics to care for sick and injured people, both on the pilgrim roads as well as the Holy Land.

"So you want to be like the Crusader knights?!?" Umm.... Yes? And no. I want to begin practicing a life of discipline and focus, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Not gonna go smite infidels or pillage villages, but I do very much want to emulate their dedication to their ideals and disciplines. No matter what Assassin's Creed tells you, the Knight Orders of the crusades were fiercely dedicated soldiers and monks who took it upon themselves to protect, aid, and serve those who sought to travel to and within the Holy Land. True, they made mistakes at times, but that was their purpose, and many of them held firm to that despite the great temptations their power brought them.

"Well, that sounds kinda interesting. What all are you going to do?" This is where I move from the well thought out side of this experiment to the more amorphous figure-it-out side. I for sure want to create a liturgy (I'll explain why at some point, I promise), and I want to create a sort of codified theology. Think of it as a cross between a really small/light systematic theology and a really dense catechism. Basically, it will follow a question and answer format, but instead of one or two sentences, it'll be several paragraphs. Another thing I want to do is with each of these things, give an application. Granted it's all my personal opinion, but I want to give some ideas of what these beliefs mean in our lives, not just in our minds.

Their will probably be more (I'm batting around a Book of Common Prayers idea as well), but we'll cross those bridges as we go. One final point: talk to me. tell me what you think. Did I miss something, am I misdirected in a certain thought, does your preferred translation of the Bible cast a different light on something? I want feedback! I love talking about these kinds of things, and it's only by talking about them that we can grow as the body of Christ!

EDIT: Realized I posted this without explaining the title! A knight-errant is a knight who wanders around looking for chivalrous deeds to do and adventures to have. I am a knight. I am a vessel through which God wages war on His enemy. I am a soldier whose primary task is to brave the very mouth of Hell and pull the floundering lost souls from it's jaws. I have armor and weapons(Ephesians 6:10-20), as well as standing orders (Matthew 28:18-20).

I am also errant. This world is not my ultimate home. I am a sojourner here, only staying so that I may serve God in this world before being recalled to his side. My time here is short, in the grand scheme of things, and so I must be busy about His work. There's no time to waste, because so many need to know about Him.

And there you go, a little explanation about the title :)