Repackaging God
This post is part of a series of posts. Be sure not to miss part 1, part 2, part 3, part4 and part 5.
People need God.
In order for people to encounter God, they must either go to him, or he must go to them.
Jesus came to us. So what does that mean?
We have this argument about that act all the time. Was it God’s way because he chose to come to us? Or was it man’s way because Jesus became a man and related to men?
Obviously it was God’s way, but the confusion comes when we try to imitate Jesus. Do we have to repackage the bible in order for people to read it? The Message is a repackaged version of the bible that some people celebrate, and others disdain. Some people quote scripture without saying it’s scripture. Is that bad? Just because we don’t say “John 3:16″ after reading it, does that mean it’s not scripture? Are we watering down the gospel? By repackaging the gospel in a way that is more relevant to today’s culture, are we repackaging God? Are we changing God so that he’ll be more palatable to humans? Is that what God did? Is Jesus a repackaged version of God that was more palatable to humans?
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specialu77
interesting… but
1) Jesus IS the Word of God. (John 1:1)
2) I don’t think Jesus repackaged the Word. He became the way TO the Word. I mean, yeah he became man, but he never watered down the truth. I mean look at how many times he ticked people off by what he said.
thoughts?
Apr 16th, 2007
yftoad
Jesus is definitely not a “repackaged” version of God that was more palatable to humans. No matter how much we’d like to believe it, God is not subject to the whims and desires of men-if He were, He would not be God. I do believe, however, that people do water down the gospel, though not necessarily because they are trying to make it more relevant to today’s culture. I do think relevance is important - if something is irrelevant, why would anyone want to pay attention? There is a fine line, however, between marketing and relevance…and I think Christianity tends to dance over that line more often than not.
Apr 17th, 2007
kanfood
I think each of your question deserves a post of its own. hehehe..
“By repackaging the gospel in a way that is more relevant to today’s culture, are we repackaging God? Are we changing God so that he’ll be more palatable to humans?”
God is a dynamic God and our culture is a changing culture. Humans within a certain period of history, who have limited comprehesion of God, often get stuck on one dimension of God. If we stay true to his word, I don’t think we can ever change God. I personally don’t think repackaging God is a bad thing. Repackaging does not mean changing. Repackaging doesn’t change the essence of the product, rather, it presents the product in a way that will draw people in. Repackaging is not changing. By repackaging God (like the Message bible, or calling Church as a faith community instead), we are merely presenting him in a way that’s is more relevant to our current culture.
Apr 17th, 2007
kanfood
hmm…after a few more days of thinking whether Jesus is a repackaged version of God, I have to come to the conclusion that the answer is YES.
Repackaging is another name for contextualizing. God always speaks in a way that we understand witihout our hunman cultural and historical context. He uses analogies, things that are close to our hearts to communicate his message to us. He is the biggest contextualizer. He always repackaged his messages to us to make it personal and powerful. Two people might both experience the love of God, yet they experienced it through different ways. It is God who speaks to them in their personal context to make his love powerful to them.
In order for God to speak to us in a way that we can fully understand, he has to speak to us from a human to human level. Thus the Son took on a human form so he can reach out to us. We often think of Jesus as human, but we must remember that He is second person of trinity and He does not need to be human at all. He only took on a human form for a limited amount of time for a specific purpose. Now that his first mission on earth has accomplished, he now reigns again with the Father and resume His position not as human, but as God.
So in conclusion, the fact that the second person of Trinity took on a human form so we can know God is a way of God repackaging himself in order for us to know him fully.
Apr 20th, 2007
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