Trinity, by Jason Byassee

Introduction

The God We Don’t Talk About

1. What are the worst analogies for the Trinity you have heard?

- What are the best? 

2. How can we speak of a God who is beyond our words? 

3. When has God felt unbearably distant to you? 

- Unbearably close? 

4. How can these claims hold together: “If you understand it, it is not God,” and “the answer is always Jesus”? 

- Can these both be true?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 7

Creation and Hope

1.What does it mean to be your parents’ child? 

2.  What advantages and disadvantages did you receive by virtue of them being your parents? 

3.  How are you like and unlike your parents? 

4.  How are your children like and unlike you? 

5.  What is the difference between being God’s child and God’s servant? 

6.  What are our responsibilities as God’s children to God? 

7.  Who is the apple of your eye? 

8.  What does it mean to you that you are the apple of God’s eye? 

9.  What gives you joy?  How do you share it? 

10. As God’s people, we are children of the light. What does that play out in your everyday life?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 6

God’s Absence from Creation

1. What does it mean that God rests? 

2. Do you get adequate rest, vacation time, time off from your responsibilities? 

3. How could you help give someone else the opportunity to find peace and rest? 

4. If creation is an expression of God’s love as a parent, what signs of love do you see in creation? 

5. Giving children supervision is a parent’s responsibility, but how much is too much or too little? 

6. Do you do better when you are closely supervised or when you are not? 

7. Who is supervising you? 

8. What makes for a good supervisor? 

9. When God is perceived as absent, we in the church must step forward. What are ways that your church can be God’s hands and feet in the world and your neighborhood? 

10. How do you teach a child to be obedient? 

11. What does it mean to be “[freed] for joyful obedience?” 

      (see 1 John 5)

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 5
God’s Presence in Creation

1. Where do you see new things happening around you? 

2. How are younger generations different from older generations? 

3. Share the last new big-ticket item that you bought and/or describe the newest member of your family. 

4. Who are persons in the Bible that God chose? 

5. Often God chooses the small and the apparently insignificant in order to achieve great things. Where do we see this in the O.T. stories of Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Rachel, and David?

6. God’s actions in history follow a pattern of love and redemption. Share a time when someone you know was lost, but now is found. 

7. What are some ways that God reaches out to people today? 

8. How does your church reach out in love to new members, visitors, and strangers? 

9. We participate in God’s gift of love when we reach out to those in need. How do you share your time, talents, gifts, service, and witness with others at home, at church, at work, in your community?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 4

Enter Evil

1. Reread the section of this chapter titled, “The Problem of Evil: Theodicy.” 

- What might it mean that evil is real in our world? 

2. You may know people who have given up on God or who are angry at God because something bad happened to them. 

- How can you respond?

- How can you help? 

- Is it OK to be angry with God? 

3. For many people, evil is a mystery because we cannot understand how a loving God can allow it. 

- Why do you think bad things happen to good people? 

4. How are we to live with the reality of evil? 

There are different kinds of evil—for example, personal, corporate, systemic. 

Give examples of each and how you can address them. 

5. How can we help people find hope? 

- Where do you see signs of hope in yourself, family, church, community, nation?

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Chapter 3 

The Human Creature

1. We often talk about people worrying about the kind of image they portray. How important is image and status in your church? 

2. What is the community’s image of your church? 

3. What kind of reputation does your church have? 

4. How important is a person’s reputation? 

5. What kinds of things damage or bolster a person’s image or reputation? 

6. How can we be God’s representatives in our world? 

7. Share a time when someone represented you or when you represented someone (for example, your family, your business, your friend). 

8. When someone represents you, what do you expect? 

9. Discuss the power of words. What kinds of words are helpful and hurtful? 

10. Share a time when someone told you they loved you. 

11. Think and talk about ways that God shows us God’s love.

Creation, by Justo Gonzalez

Creation

Chapter 2

1. Reread the first three chapters of Genesis. What jumps out at you today?

2. Briefly compare the two creation stories.  Which story do you prefer?

3. Why might there be two different stories of creation in the Bible?

4. What does it mean that the greatest act of God’s love is taking a risk on us?

5. Share a time when you took a risk.  Are you typically a risk-tolerant or risk-adverse person?

6. The author says that what should concern us about creation is not how the world was made, but who made it.  Is this true for you?

7.  Why do people argue over the how?

8.  The author says that the “doctrine of creation is neither only nor even primarily about origins, but rather about relationships: about the relationship between God and the world, between God and us, among us and others, and among all creatures.”  

- Share a time when you felt close to God. 

- How do you see God reflected in nature?  

- In other people?  

- In yourself?