If the story of Jesus’ life had a battle it was a daily fight for identity. If His story had an antagonist, it was doubt, better known as unbelief. And each time Jesus was confronted with the crisis of identity He chose to believe what His Father had said about Him from the very beginning. Jesus was sure in His identity.

Every test by God is an invitation to transition from one narrative to another, from control to love, from orphan to son or daughter, from bondage to freedom, from fractured thinking to wholeness, from our perspective to His, from our best thoughts about who He is, to the truth about who He is, from our story, to the whole story; the one He is telling.

As far as we know, Jesus got a “well done,” before He did anything. And I think this “well done” is what empowered Him to “do.” I believe all the beautiful works He did over the last three years of His life was the evidence of the first thirty years of becoming sure in His Fathers always-good love.

To describe God as in control is an earthbound perspective, it’s’ human reasoning at best, while it may be an accurate assessment from where we are standing, it not the truth, at least, not the truth that sets us free. Control is an immature and powerless way to describe God,

Need is the final singular truth by which our world operates. Humanity exists within the confines of need. We trade in the currency of need. Need is the foundational structure of our DNA. It’s the defining core value of our very existence.

“Consent is the depth of love…” Jonathan Foster shares about his book, Theology of Consent, where he blends René Girard’s scapegoating theory with open and relational theology. The guys talk about anthropology, mimetic theory, and the nature of love. This is a conversation for those already deep in the forest of theopoetics, life, love, the church, and theology.