Promote your thoughts and Co-author the next blog post!
So we have come to an exciting new element that I would like to introduce to the blog: Co-authorship.
This is where I phrase a question with a little bit of context, and you, the readers, reply to it with your ideas on the topic. I then take some of the best replies, mould them together with my own thoughts, and construct a post for the following week. It will be a co-authored collaborative effort that bares a unique combination of flavours.
Also, for those of you who have blogs, this will be a great way to promote your blog and writings because I will place a link to your blog next to your contribution.
Remember, this blog goes out to a few hundred people every week and is read by people from all around the world (or so the stats say). So, your contributions are sure to be seen by many. Also, the last blog post entitled “The Tree of Life: Zoe-Life” was given a top 10 ranking by one of the highest ranking Christian blogs on the Internet: Beyond Evangelical (check it out). It is read by thousands of people every day from all around the world and should expose your contributions and posts on this blog to many more people in the future.
Rules for contributions
- Firstly, you need to make sure that you are subscribed to the blog either by email or through wordpress.com
- Then, you Facebook “like” this blog post at the bottom of the post. (you can tweet it as well if you like)
- Then write your piece in the comment box.
- If you are a blogger or writer, add a link to your blog or the place where you store your writings at the bottom of your comment.
- You need to ensure that you keep your replies free from any form of defamatory language against other Christians or any other ministry.
- Please keep it fairly succinct. About 1 average paragraph or so should suffice. I want to ensure that as many people’s contributions can be added to the post as possible.
Then, once I have seen that you have liked this post, I will approve your comment and use it to construct next week’s post. You need to do this before Friday evening at midnight because then the comments will be closed and I will begin constructing next week’s post.
Ok, so now that we have gotten the admin out of the way, let’s get to business.
The Tree of Life has been seen as a mythical figure throughout the centuries in different cultures. The Mesopotamians, Egyptians and even the Mayans and Aztecs wrote of the Tree of Life having mystical powers and being situated at the centre of the Earth. More recently, a film starring Brand Pitt and Sean Penn entitled “The Tree of Life” portrays how a young boy grows up, loses his innocence and later finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. And not too long ago, the hit movie, Avatar also uses a mystical tree to portray the connection between the physical and the spiritual.
*The question is: with so many different historical and cultural understandings of the tree of life, many being mythical and mysterious, what do you say the tree of life is how is it relevant to us today?
________________________________________________________________________________
You have just finished reading an exciting new blog tradition called Promote your thoughts and Co-author the next blog post! If you wish to leave a comment, please click on the Comment link below. Also, if you have enjoyed it, please consider sharing it by clicking on the relevant links below the post on the blog. And if you missed last weeks post, click on the link just above the comment box to check it out. Glad to have you aboard!
Comments
8 Responses to “Promote your thoughts and Co-author the next blog post!”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying...-
[...] week I started a new little tradition on the blog called “Promote your own thoughts and Co-author the next blog post.” It is designed to give you, the readers a chance to come and add your thoughts on a topic [...]
-
[...] tree, but an actual tree functioning as a symbol. (To see the rest of this comment please go here and scroll down to the bottom of the [...]
The Tree of Life? Was it a real (physical) tree, in the Garden of Eden? Is it a real tree described by John in the book of Revelation? Is it just a symbol? So what if it is? Does it matter thinking about such things? The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise. (Proverbs 11:30 ESV). Now here is the right question. Are we being the tree of life to others? Is Jesus the true Tree of Life living inside us, so that when people look at us, they are captivated by Jesus?
I asked my wife what she thought the tree of life was. She said that if we believe the garden was a real garden, then we should really believe the tree was a real tree. Good point! But scripture portrays Jesus as “the bread of life”, “the true vine” and knowing Him IS “eternal life”. He said “I AM the way, the truth and the LIFE!” Why is He life itself? Because HE IS GOD! Man was created to live off God! Could it be that in the tree of life God had placed Himself? The very breath of God that had brought Adam to life was placed in the tree to give Adam eternal life. I end my thought with this: Whether the tree of life is physical or metaphorical, God knows and we will truly know when we are in heaven. But one thing is for sure, Christ is all the life we will ever need now and forever and to feast of Him is available to us now and will be for all eternity. So let’s feast!
I think with all things in scripture there is the literal and the deeper meaning. Personally I think it was a literal tree (remembering that heaven and earth were connected at that point). That said, within heaven (where God is) I believe though the tree can be a literal tree, it does not mean Christ is a tree. It could simply mean that Christ is representing Himslef in the tree to us, because we derive an understanding of a tree.
We get food shade and a promise of continual life from a tree. I think that is what the tree of life is. The promise of a future, continual life. We also cannot eat once from a tree and never go back. We depend on the tree being there and need to return periodically in order to stay alive. Likewise you cannot just connect with Christ once and live, you need to connect regularly to sustain life.
Simply put, the Tree of Life defines a relationship, one of connectedness and continual dependence.
I say, the tree of life is an expression of an aspect of Jesus Christ, which is the encapsulation and giving or rather the production and mainteinance of life as well as the expression of such a life in Christ Himself (or in itself to refer specifically to the tree). By considering the name of the tree it becomes clear that the tree is life itself, it is the tree of life, not from life or for life, but of life, meaning the tree holds some kind of dominion over life, I mean it gives life, makes life and maintains life (I am talking about the fruits here). Without such a tree there would simply be no life, it is it that gives birth to life and has all the capabilities of maintaining that very life as long as that life will stay attached to the tree (again I am talking about the fruits of the tree). which really to me just sounds like Jesus HImself, the Creator, except the fruits of the tree here are likened to us human beings, i.e. all of us humans because one should remenber that even the fruits of the same tree do not really taste the same.
Ahh… The Tree of Life. Here’s some thoughts for consideration (Hope it’s worth two cents!):
1. If it’s a tree, then it’s a thing (an “it”, if you wish), which cannot be, as God does not allow his life to dwell in things.
2. If it’s not a tree, we have a problem. I don’t need to tell you why. Good, solid fundamentalists like John MacArthur will do so. Besides, as an earlier commentator has pointed out, then it also may not be a real garden. Or a serpent. Or an actual woman. Or… You get the point.
This means that it has to be a tree, but it cannot be a tree containing the actual life of God (or any other type of spiritual life, for that matter, for all life comes from God and originates in him). And so, I suspect, the way out of the dilemma is not to see an enchanted tree, but an actual tree functioning as a symbol.
To understand this, imagine a father teaching his son the basics of obedience. He takes two balls, a blue one and a red one, and places them on a table before his young son. He then tells his son: “The blue ball is the ball of obedience, and the red ball is the ball of rebellion. You are allowed to play with the blue ball, but you may never play with the red ball. When you play with the blue ball, you’ll be happpy, but when you play with the red ball, you will be very unhappy.” Clearly the balls have no inherent power to bestow either happiness or unhappiness, but they symbolise the respective outcomes that follow acts of obedience and disobedience (and the associated rewards or punishment).
In the same way, the very act of eating of the tree of life would have been an act of obedience and, as such, representative of a choice for God and the life of God. The tree need not have had any magical qualities to bestow life, for life would have been the logical consequence of obedience. Likewise, the act of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would have been an act of rebellion, and in order to do so a primary autonomous choice to selfishly and independently discern what is good and evil would already have had to take place. The eating would merely be a manifestation of a decision to live by one’s own judgment, and to reject God’s.
If the above explanation seems like somewhat of a letdown (it did to me, initially), them we merely need to remind ourselves of what we do every time we have communion. Do we need some mystical transubstantiation to provide meaning to our “eating of Christ”? Of course not. The meaning is in the identification with him. It is not a magical wafer but Christ himself who imparts his life as we identify with his body and blood.
Indeed this is the way in which we are regenerated: Through a faith-identification with Jesus Christ. Prior to Christ’s birth the ancients were saved in exactly the same way: Through a faith-identification with God’s revelation as it was given through the law and the prophets. Before Abraham’s birth individuals like Enoch and Noah walked with God through a faith-identification with God’s general revelation coupled with instances of special revelation (“Noah, build a boat!”). Prior to that, in the Garden of Eden, the symbol for making a faith-identification possible was a tree.
Adam and Eve were invited to the first communion feast in history, but like some of the Corinthians, who did not “discern the body of Christ”, they ate without the proper faith-identification and so brought the judgment of death over themselves.
If this is true, then it would suggest that the first couple must have known that to eat of the tree of life would have been to present themselves to God as life receivers and that the eating would have represented a critical rite of passage in this regard (like baptism, where we are immersed into the resurrection of Christ).
Similarly, they must have known that to eat of the other tree would have been a declaration of independence, an expressed wish to become as autonomous as God (“you shall be like God…”, “the man has become like one of us”), a “god against God” (Bonhoeffer’s term), an independent origin as opposed to a life-receiver (Gods don’t receive life, the sustain themselves), a “beginning” rather than an image and likeness (both terms imply the presence of an original model), and so on.
The “desire” that was therefore stirred up in Eve as she saw the tree of knowledge had nothing to with an intrinsic quality of the tree. It was the desire of the inmate dreaming of the warden’s key, that is, the key that would lead to the warden’s freedom. What the prisoner desires, in fact, is not the key but the freedom represented by the key.
Lastly, the tree of life differs from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in one other critical aspect: If “God alone is good” (Jesus’ words to the rich ruler), then it means that God alone knows goodness. If God alone knows goodness then it means that he alone knows when it is absent. The absence of goodness is what the Bible calls evil, and so it follows naturally that God alone knows evil. Knowing good and evil, therefore, is something that God alone can do. The knowledge of good and evil is divine and origin-al knowledge, imparting its possessor with the powers to be a sovereign judge.
Humans were never intended to be gods, and so they were never intended to function by a system of knowledge (or law) expressing itself in a series of independent judgments. Rather, they were intended to know God and, through that knowing, to share in his life and wisdom. The difference is a major one, and I don’t need to elaborate on that. Bonhoeffer has done a marvelous job in the first pages of his Ethics.
That’s my take on the subject. Hope it helps, and apologies for the length!
Btw, the extra time was left for me – a girl, as Dylan put it – to leave a post. So here goes:
Over the last year in reading books like : “The tree of Life” and “The all-inclusive Christ” by Watchman Nee, as well as Jesus Manifesto by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet, and having done so with the desire to know the Living Christ in my life and death, today, now, I don’t have much to say about what all the tree of life can be, and to be honest, i don’t really care at the moment because I have found a Tree that deserves all my attention, of whose fruit I can eat.
I am done with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I have spent my whole life eating from that tree to no avail – only principles and laws giving fruit to anxiety about my sinfulness and building up spiritual pride in me were the result (I was a pharisee in many ways). I choose to spend my time – when I eat or dream or think (this is my desire at least but often practised) eating and chewing and learning from the Tree of Life, my Jesus, my Life.
My counsel: spit out the fruit from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil – obsession with correct knowledge fueled by man’s need for Truth and many times Pride, or rather a need for Truth, corrupted by pride, is what has split up the church all over the world. We need the Lord, the living Christ, the Tree of Life, the Eternal God with us, in us, Living through us. Thats all we need. Amen.