Liberating you from bad ideas about God
She’s just a coked-up whore,
Strung out and lying on the floor, abandoned, forsaken, forgotten, ignored.
She’s just a coked-up whore,
While a fat man with foul breath pants and heaves and rips at her dress.
She’s just a coked-up whore,
Sold for the highest bid, which wasn’t much…barely more than you’d pay for lunch.
Yesterday, I proposed some new theological categories that focus on the activity of God in history, rather than on abstract ideas about God. Hopefully, by arranging theology this way, the study of theology leads us to action, rather than to more abstraction as commonly happens with current theological studies. Studying theology this way will hopefully lead us to both know the truth and live it.
Below are seven categories (which have been revised from time to time since the original publication of this article), with a little more explanation. I’ve already made one change, from “Judging” to “Justice.” I did not like “judging” but I’m not fond of “justice” either for several reasons, but mostly because it is more of a noun than a verb, and I want the categories to be verbs. Any ideas? (Thanks Tim Nichols, for the suggestion of “Naming”!)
Also, following each explanation in parentheses is where discussion about some of the ideas from traditional Systematic Theological (ST) categories might be found.
It is also important to note that all seven of the following categories can be found in Genesis 1, the opening chapter of the Bible. These categories are all performed by God, and then (to one degree or another) passed on to Adam and Eve. This is what it means to be created in the image of God. We do what God does on this earth.
The Bible begins and ends with the creative work of God, and everything in history and in Scripture reveals that God creates and re-creates. He not only does this with the universe, but with mankind, the nation of Israel, and the church. Humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creation, and is called to be co-laborers with God in creation.
(ST: Theology Proper, Israelology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology)
Other terms for this include Relating, Loving, Multiplying, Providing, and Blessing.
God is nothing if not relational. The relational aspect of God is central to thinking about God and interacting with Him. God’s relational interaction include the Trinity, the angels, and humanity. The way God interacts in these relationships reveals much about God, and helps guide us in our own relationships.
Loving is also a huge topic, and would necessarily be divided into several subcategories, such as grace, mercy, and forgiveness. The love of God is vital for understanding why and how God acts. Themes about the love of God run parallel to the previous topic, the justice of God. Love, of course, should be a primary Christian action.
(ST: Theology Proper, Trinitarianism, Christology, Pneumatology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Angelology)
Communication is central to all of God’s relationships. With us, He communicates through nature, our conscience, Scripture, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and one another. Communication in its many forms and varieties is also central to being human.
(ST: Bibliology, Anthropology, Christology, Ecclesiology)
This is seeing things as they really are and calling things by their right names. It is being able to accurately discern good from evil is something that only God can do. God, being holy, is also just, and must deal with all that is not holy. Humans participate in this, but due to our rebellion against God, came under His judgment, and unable to make right judgments on our own, and so our role in God’s justice is limited. The Scriptures are full of themes of God’s justice, both in areas of condemning the wicked and defending the oppressed.
(ST: Hamartiology, Eschatology)
In the beginning, God separates light from darkness, waters above from the waters below, the various plants and animals after their “kind,” man and woman, etc. But there are good types of separation and bad types as well. After sin enters the scene, humanity is separated from God, and man and woman become separated from each other.
The focus in the rest of Scripture is learning what to separate and what to join together. Sadly, religion often separates things wrongly, teaching us to join with what we should not (greed, envy, rivalry) and separate from what we must join together (other people, culture, creation, life).
(ST: Soteriology, Anthropology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology)
Redemption is the pinnacle of theological studies. It is both the goal and the means for everything else. Because of God’s love in all of His relationships, He seeks to communicate with us what is happening in our world as a result of His justice and love, and what He is doing to restore the perfect relationship that He desires. Those who have been restored are to actively participate with God in bringing the rest of God’s creation to redemption.
(ST: Soteriology, Christology, Israelology, Ecclesiology, Eschatology)
We can also speak of living and serving.
Day 7 of creation is about God’s rule over the world He created. He also gave the sun, moon, and stars to rule over the heavens, and gave Adam and Eve the responsibility to rule and have dominion over the earth. To properly carry out our God-given function on this earth, we must learn how to properly live in this earth, with each other and with the plants and animals, and rule them as God rules us.
* * * * *
What do you think of these six categories? Do they fairly represent the major activities of God in Scripture and in history, and also indicate the major ways that we are also to be involved in the world? Can you think of a different term for “justice” that is a verb?
Here are the blog posts that made me think this week. Thanks to you who wrote them!
That should keep you busy for the weekend. Keep writing, because I’m reading!
If you are thinking of publishing an eBook, there are a few steps you can take which will help you along the way. I am by no means an expert, but I recently published my first eBook to learn the basics, and the following steps are fairly close to the process I used.
Note: Since I published The Lie,
I am not familiar with all word processors. I used Microsoft Word, but I hear that OpenOffice.org offers a good, free word processor. Whatever program you use to write your text, make sure everything–absolutely everything–you write is based on “styles.”
I don’t have the room in this post to explain about styles. To learn more about them, and to implement them in your word processor, I highly recommend you download and read the FREE Style Guide at Smashwords.com. Then set up your styles, and follow them religiously. This will save you so much headache later.
If you already have your book written, or if you are trying to publish your blog posts as an eBook, you will probably want to copy and paste all your text into Notepad, which will strip away all the styles. Then copy the clean text into a blank document that has the styles all set up, and apply the styles to the paragraphs, headings, titles, quotes, and anything else in the book.
Once these are all set up, type your book. This step could take a while.
If you didn’t do it already, add a title page. Include the name of the book, the author, the publisher information (Smashwords has specific guidelines for this, so follow them closely), and an ISBN if you bought one (see below).
I didn’t do this for The Lie because it was not a full-length book. But some eReading platforms, such as the iPad, are requiring an ISBN. Sadly, they are not cheap. You can buy them straight from Bowker, the official ISBN agency, or you can use a reseller, such as Publisher Services.
Back when I worked for a publisher, we used Bowker, so I recommend them. Besides, if you are thinking of self-publishing five or more books, their prices are better anyway.
If you used styles properly, and made use of the Heading 1, and Heading 2 styles, you can easily create a linked Table of Contents. In Microsoft Word, click “References” and then select Table of Contents. Select your options, and you are off and running. I generally only have Level 1 headings in my TOC.
Chapter breaks will make sure that each chapter begins on a new screen in the eReader. Some reads love this because it makes the book appear more like a paper book, and provides a definitive sense of a new chapter. Other readers, however, hate this in eBooks, because they have to scroll through a blank page to get to the next chapter. You decide what is best for you.
To add a break, go to the beginning of each chapter, and right before the chapter title, use your Word Processor to insert a Page Break.
You will have to create your own book cover. If you have a friend who is a Graphic Artist, work out a deal with them. Otherwise, buy Photoshop, or use a free photo editing program such as Gimp, Photoscape, Piknik, or Canva. I am hearing that many authors now prefer Canva.
The book cover should be a minimum of 1000 pixels wide. I made mine about 1500 x 2200 pixels.
Save the cover as a JPEG in the some folder as your book document.
After your book is typed and properly formatted with styles, save your book to Filtered HTML, which in Word, is “Web Page, Filtered.” I don’t know what it might be called in other word processors. The “Filtered” HTML strips out a lot of unnecessary coding.
This HTML file is roughly the way your book will appear in an eReader. The eReader will add margins and some other features, but overall, this HTML file is now the base document for ePublishing.
IF you know CSS, you can use Notepad++ (or your favorite text editor) to tweak the style sheets and make the following three optional adjustments to your document.
This step is only necessary if you want to embed a cover on the “first page” of your eBook. It’s entirely optional, and not all eBooks do it. Also, there might be a way to do this in a word processor, but I haven’t tried it yet.
Using the HTML document, add the following code right after the <body> tag:
<div id=”cover”><center><img src=”cover.jpg”></center></div>
Make sure, of course, that the image source name (cover.jpg above) matches the name of your actual cover.
If you added the optional front cover image to your HTML, you need to zip up the files for uploading. Otherwise, just upload the HTML document by itself.
To zip the HTML file with the Cover image, use your file explorer, select both the html file and the jpeg cover. Right click on one of them, and choose “Send to –> Compressed (zipped) folder.”
Upload the HTML file or the zipped file to the sites where you want to publish. The site may also have you upload the cover jpeg separately. The sites I use are:
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords
The websites are pretty self-explanatory about price settings, royalty payments, and how long it will take before your book is available (usually 24-48 hours).
Everybody has different ways of selling the book, but unless you tell someone it is for sale, you won’t sell any books. So use websites, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever you can to let people know about your book.
That’s it! You are now a published eBook author! Congratulations.
If you used this guide, and published your book, please let me know in the comment section below!
2012 Note: Some of this has changed in the last year, as I have published other ebooks on Amazon.com
1. Don’t forget to enter the drawing for a free copy of NT Wright’s, The Challenge of Jesus (with DVD)
Just post a response comment over on the review post, and you’ll be entered. The drawing is this Friday.
2. A few weeks ago, I agreed to review a copy of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality
If you are curious about the book, you can Read a sample PDF, or interact with the author on Wesley’s Tumblr or Twitter @WesleyHill.
3. On the subject of being gay and Christian, I was amused by a post today over at “Jesus or Squirrel.” It’s funny how we pick and choose which passages of Scripture we follow and which ones we ignore. Click on over there and see what I mean.
4. I just noticed….this is my 500th post!!! Yay! I feel like I should celebrate somehow.
5. Oh, and Happy Birthday, George Washington. OK, so I lied in the post title. This post does have something to do with Washington’s birthday.
