Trinity as Community

Today is Trinity Sunday, so I thought I would take this opportunity to write a post I've been thinking about for a while. It is based totally on someone else's idea, but I really like the concept, and am going to share it here.

The book Everybody's Normal Until you Get to Know Them by John Ortberg is about community -- about our need for community, friends, each other, and how to nurture other people in community. I read the book a while back and really enjoyed it.

In the second chapter, Ortberg takes some time to talk about the Trinity and how it relates to the idea of community.

His premise is that all three "components" of the trinity are shy. They -- God, Jesus and the spirit -- are not shy in the way that we would think of it. They are shy not in a self-serving, self-absorbed way, but in a shyness of other-centeredness.

I love his description of the work of the Holy Spirit:

Imagine drawing a stick figure on the chalkboard representing Jesus. The spirit sounds behind the chalkboard, "reaches around with one hand and points with a single finger to the image of Jesus. "Look at him; listen to him; learn from him; follow him, worship him, be devoted to him, serve him, love him, be preoccupied with him."

Shyness of other-centeredness

Jesus points toward God, and tell us to follow him. He does not bask in the glory of being God's son. He prays, "No thy will but yours' be done."

Believe it or not, God demonstrates this attitude as well. The two times we hear him speaking in the New Testament, he is pointing to Jesus, and saying, "Blessed is this one. Watch and listen to this one."

Within this trinity, there is a shyness of love, each pointing to other member, and uplifting. It is a model of community. Each points to the other in a gracious circle. "The trinity is a self-sufficient community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge and prayer," says Dallas Willard as quoted by Ortberg.

God didn't create us out of loneliness. He created us "because he was so in love with community that he wanted a world full of people to share it with."