Introductions
A resume never really says what it should. In its chronology of names and dates and accomplishments it often paints us flat, in two dimensions.
Because what we’ve done in the past doesn’t necessarily correspond to who we’ve been or who we will be. At best, the facts in black give only glimpses of us, marginally finite marks on a page that hint at larger truths.
There’s the potential for that same kind of disconnect here, I think, in this editorial. I can introduce myself as the editor of the God section here at RelevantMagazine.com and tell you a few things about myself, but to really know me you’d have to talk to my wife, my friends, hang out with me for a while.
Here, you’re only going to get glimpses of me. And sometimes glimpses can be dangerous. We humans are great myth makers. We get a hold of a few facts and then fill in our own blanks, content in our assumptions. I know I often do the same thing with God: I take a handful of experiences and secondhand stories and construct my own version of truth.
Still, we’ve got to start somewhere. Here, in this God section I hope that you’ll see enough glimpses of God, catch his reflection through the words and the images, through the thoughts and personalities of every contributor, that your concept of God will be richer and larger as a result. Hopefully, you’ll be reading pieces from all different kinds of Christians: Calvinists and Charismatics, Protestants and Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians. Some pieces will challenge your conception of God, will pull at your own assumptions, challenge your own thinking.
I really hope that here at Relevant you’ll read words of wisdom and patience and peace and all those things that should characterize Christ’s followers. But if not, I at least am hoping that what you’ll read here will be real, more than just some kind of regurgitation of what is supposed to be true. I’m hoping you’ll see the writers and the subjects they cover as real; not cardboard cutouts or pre-programmed attitudes, but as real people who are informed by faith and anchored to the soil of real life. If rough edges show, you can forgive them for being human. If God shines through, you can thank him for his grace.
