"In Our Image"

People love to complicate things. Have you ever noticed that? A slight difference in opinion can lead to hours of useless debate. We get locked into our mindset and start seeing things in black and white, right and wrong. And, of course, our opinion/belief is always the right one.

I think that's why people get all tangled up about Who God Is.

I like to say that we little hooman beans see things as, "either, or," and God is infinite, so He looks at "either" and "or" and just says, "and." He's outside our limited black-and-white viewpoints.

If that makes sense.

I think this is why we get confused about the Trinity idea. I mean, is He three or is He one?

Obviously He's both, but that's hard to understand when we live in a world where something can be three, or one, but not both.

I think I was in middle school or early high school when I first started to get the idea of God being one and three. I remember being at a home school co-op where we had split into two sides, one arguing Muslim beliefs and the other side Christian ones. One of the Islam advocates brought up the issue of Christianity's "three gods" and all the advocates of Christianity went into a tizzy trying to explain themselves all at once. I remember thinking, This is so much simpler than what they're trying to say.

In the bedlam of shouted opinions, no one but the teacher heard mine, but she affirmed it, which gave me confidence.

My thought was this:

We are made "in God's image." People take that to mean all sorts of things, such as physical appearance, a knowledge of morals, etc. But I think it means the way our bodies, minds, and souls/hearts/emotions are put together. We have three parts, but each of us is only one person.

For instance, I can be washing dishes, crying over a friend's breakup, and thinking about my plans for the weekend all at once. I'm doing three completely unrelated things, but that doesn't mean my brain has hopped out of my skull or my soul is somewhere far away.

That is, I believe, how the Trinity works.

I tend to think of Father God as the mind of God. He's the planner, the logic behind the entirety of everything.

Jesus is obviously the body- the physical form/aspect of God.

And I'd see the Holy Spirit as God's form of soul. He's the part of God that softens hearts and heals emotional scars/wounds.

Some people would split this up into different parts such as "body, soul, and spirit." I don't want to get all technical here. In fact, I have no guarantee that this idea is theologically correct at all!

But it's the only explanation of the Trinity of God that I've heard that is relatively understandable (at least to me) without being oversimplified. Obviously God is bigger and more complex than any "hooman bean," but since we are "made in God's image," which literally just means we resemble Him, I feel like looking at the way He put us together can help us understand how He operates.

Again, I'm not a well-versed theologian or anything. These are just my thoughts, but I think maybe God gave them to me, so I'll pass them on just in case.

~Dolly