The “everywhere-ness” of God

At the heart of Paul’s Christology is the book of Colossians. According to many theologians the central theme of Paul’s Christology-and Colossians -is that in Christ all things belong Christ is all and is in all. Paul’s, very Jewish, understanding of YHWH is that God was at the centre of all things or- to use the words from a modern hymn-God’s centre is everywhere and his circumference is no where There is simply no place where God ISN’T. This is never passive but active, dynamic, always life-giving and affirming.

The gospel came to the west it then became westernized- in that it was influenced deeply by Greek platonic thinking it became a gospel that was best characterized by dualistic thinking. God was no longer at the centre of all things and so we had to keep on bringing him back to the centre we had to drag God back it became a divided gospel that said God is HERE but NOT there. The very idea that we had to accept Christ into our hearts -because he wasn’t there to begin with-is foreign to the gospel of Jesus and of Paul.

A better description for conversion is that-like the resurrection story- we let God OUT we simply cannot let God IN. When we  recognise where it is that God IS -rather than creating artificial places where God ISN”T- that is the very basis for where conversion takes place. Jesus said the kingdom of God is within this verse has come to mean all sorts of things but the obvious meaning seems overlooked that God is ALWAYS within and that the great tragedy is that we fail to see this.