The single most amazing thing about God is…. Him being God. Him being God means that he is far beyond our grasp intellectually. We could not possibly fathom all that is God. I think Paul says it best, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom…” 1 Corinthians 1:25. In other words, the least intelligent thing God has ever done is immensely greater than the smartest thing that man has ever done. Is it possible that even in our wisest moments to grasp the wholeness of God? Not in any way.

I introduced this question with that so that you understand that I do not claim to grasp the mysteries of what I am about to describe. I only know that it is true because God said that it is.

The Trinity is the concept of God being Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, however, Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are separate. The Muslims claim us to be polytheistic because of this (polytheistic means that we believe in more than one god), however, they simply do not try to grasp the concept.

The Trinity is never mentioned in the bible, it is simply a concept based on several different verses. Jesus says he is one with the Father (John 10:30), yet other verses speak of them as separate (John 1:14, 6:57, and several others). Jesus has to leave in order for the Holy Spirit to come (John 16:7), however Jesus is the truth (John 14:16) yet the Holy Spirit is called the spirit of truth in the very next verse. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus but it is not Jesus and comes out of the Father (John 15:26). Confused yet? Good, if you’re not you are a wiser man than I.

To any skeptic, they will simply write these off as contradictions and if you choose to believe that then that is fine. However, consider for a moment (and I did this on purpose) that all of the verses just came from the same book. I’m sure John was just as confused about this as we are, but that didn’t stop him from writing it. I wonder if he thought while he was writing “this doesn’t make much sense but ya know, that’s what he said so that’s what I’m writing”. I believe that it was a concept that John very much wanted to grasp and tried his best to put into his gospel as clearly as he could.

So what is this concept? It is that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father are each individuals yet they are each the one true God, Yaweh.

I have heard many parallel illustrations to try to put in human terms a Godly concept, (one I heard involved some kind of half grown chicken fetus). The best one I’ve heard and makes the most sense to me is the illustration of ourselves. We as humans are three separate beings in one. We are mind, body and spirit. Our mind represents our intelligence or logic, which as we all know our body and spirit do not always follow. Our intelligence tells us that we should not over eat, our spirit tends to do otherwise and leads our body against our mind. Our spirit can feel the emotions of love and our body can feel it another way while our mind understands the concept of love. Our mind can work completely separate from our body, our spirit as well and our body does many things that we don’t tell it to do (such as breathe and beat our own heart). They are separate and can be referred to as different entities, yet they are each fully us. You can recognize someone simply by seeing their body. We can also recognize someone’s spirit even if their body were to change (think of Freaky Friday, even when they switched bodies, people noticed that they were different).

I like this parallel because I think it parallels on purpose. I believe that God made us in his image. Not physically but as a being, as a soul, he made us in a small likeness of himself, incorporating in a small way the essence of the trinity in us all.

There is one difference though. Where our mind, body and spirit do not always agree, God’s trinity is always in one accord (1 John 5:7-8).

So that is the Trinity and why Christian’s believe it. I’ll be quite honest, it is a hard concept for me, myself, to understand fully and I don’t claim to know how it all works. All I know is that it does.

Tags: 1 corinthians 1, contradictions, foolishness of god, grasp, Holy Spirit, muslims, mysteries, one god, skeptic, spirit of jesus, spirit of truth, wholeness