The Reason for God: The Dance of God Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual

life stories and out of what we see in the worlds history. We have seen how the Bible accounts for where we came from (origin), whats wrong with us (problem) and how it can be fixed (solution) with more explanatory power than competing accounts. Now its time to look at the biblical story line as a whole the drama of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. Trinity: God is one being who exists eternally in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is eternally and fundamentally relational and community-in-unity. The gospel of John: The Son is living eternally in the bosom of the Father (1:18). The Son describes the Spirit as living to glorify Him (16:14) and in turn, the Son glorifies the Father (17:4) and the Father glorifies the Son (17:5). To glorify someone is to praise, enjoy and delight in them for who they are. You find ultimate joy to see their joy, to sacrifice your interests to make them happy. Perichoresis: Each person of the Trinity center on the interests and desires of the others. None demands that others resolve around him. Each voluntarily pours love and delight into the other two, an interpenetrating life/dance of God. What this means is God is eternally Love and relational at the core of His being. If God is unipersonal, this means that God was sovereign and powerful from all eternity but not love. Love is absent until God create other beings to love. Power is the primary essence of God, not love. Creation: But if God is triune, love is His essence. Ultimate reality is a community-inunity. He is infinitely joyful and doesnt need to create other beings because he is lonely. He created us in order to share His joy and invite us into this dance know, delight and resemble Him. If we do not live this way, we are not going against reality. If you make everything else revolve around your own interests/needs or unwilling to experience loss of being in committed relationships, you are out of touch with your own nature (in the image of God) CS Lewis: The only place besides heaven that is safe from the pain and suffering of relationships is hell. Fall: But we failed because we wanted to get God to orbit around our goals and interests self absorption and social disintegration. The dance of joyful, mutually self giving relationship is impossible in a world where everyone tries to get everything else to revolve around them.

Redemption: At the cross, Jesus is giving away His self to serve us so that we can be reconciled into community with God. We are invited to center our lives on Him. For God, the act of seeking His own praise is the ultimate loving act. Precisely because He loves us so, He relentlessly commands us to pursue the praises of His name in our hearts. Think of what we would be missing if God did not insist that we worship Him. We would never know the source of ultimate satisfaction. This love and joy sets us free from the need to prove or justify ourselves. Restoration: At the end of the Bible, we see heaven descending into our world to unite with it and purify it of all brokenness and imperfection. Tears will be wiped away and wars shall cease. The ecosystem and humanity will be restored in peaceful interdependence. John Piper put it this way: God is infinite and wills to reveal himself to us for our enjoyment of his fullness forever. Yet we are finite and cannot at any time, or in any finite duration of time, comprehend the limitless, infinite fullness of Gods glory Therefore the implication is that our union with God, in the all-satisfying experience of his glory, can never be complete, but must be increasing with intimacy and intensity forever and ever. There will always be more of God to discover, learn and savor since finite creatures will never exhaustively know Him. Therefore, we can glorify and enjoy God forever without ever getting bored. How do we respond? The purpose of Jesus is not only to save souls, bring forgiveness but also bring justice and shalom (holistic peace) to the world. All other religions offer salvation as a form of liberation from ordinary humanness i.e. individuality, physical embodiment etc. Only the gospel offers salvation as the transformation of this ordinary world. We enter the dance of God by worshipping Him rather than ourselves, honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in His image and care/cultivate the created world that reflects His glory. We also live forward-back as if the future is now present in doing justice and healing to the needy, bring reconciliation to those alienated from God.
PS: At the core of the Islam is the doctrine of Tawhid: that God is one, a complete singularity. There is no way to understand god as he is in himself. Allah is utterly transcendent, and unknowable. What Muslims do claim to know, however, is the revealed will of Allah for us. Islam is not about knowing God, Islam is about knowing what God wants us to do, and then submitting. That is the meaning of the word Muslim. It is the human role to glorify, honour, obey, worship and praise Allah. Since Allah is sovereign, Allah must be seen this way in every sphere of life. In theology, the task becomes not wrestling and asking hard questions. There is no historical-critical enterprise examining the reliability of the Quran in Islamic theological schools. Rather, the theological task is submission and obedienceoriented to knowing the will of Allah for us. In politics, when a societys basic account of reality is structured around submission to a supreme being, then the idea of democratic parties with multiple competing voices is always going to be a tough sella foreign imposition at best. So is a separation of church and state. In the sphere of personal relationships, the shame-based culture fits very well. It makes perfect sense to honour those who honour Allah. It makes utter sense to value relationship, nobility, and peace; living life contentedly in the place we were created to be. The idea of Dhimmitude also makes complete sense: that non-Muslims must be seen to be subject to Islam, Allah must be honoured by them also.1 After all, Allah is sovereignly glorious over everyone. In all of life, from politics to family, from science to theology, Allah must be honoured. Allah must be seen to win.
http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2012/10/marching-for-allah-6-speaking-into-a-muslim-world-view/