Primary Theological Foundation
First, let it be known: I do not know if aliens exist. I have seen several UFOs in my life time--that is: unidentified flying objects, I don't know if they were alien space craft.I have seen a cigar shaped object high in the air on a windy afternoon. I had a video camera in my hand, but stood gawking instead of filming. Facepalm. It doesn't matter. I suspect is was one of the gigantic silage bags used to ferment plant material from a local dairy that somehow was caught into the sky and filled with air. I could be wrong. It could have been something else entirely.
Another time my two youngest sons, my husband and I were driving down I-25 from Albuquerque to Las Cruces. We came to a spot where the rainbows repeated in arcs, like the Hollywood Bowl made of rainbows. It was one of the most amazing rainbow sightings I've ever seen. We pulled off the highway and stopped to enjoy the sight. Then four of five, maybe six groups of three or more triangular shaped craft appeared under the arcs flying in formations. Kinda like those pyramid Star Wars ships, shiny silver. When they neared the final rainbow arc, they disappeared. My husband, who has since moved to Heaven, saw them also. The boys were sitting in the car, the wrong angle to see the craft. Again, now that my husband has moved to Heaven and left me here on my own, I have no proof I saw those things. Oh well. They could be US advanced craft from White Sands or one of the airbases either in Albuquerque or Alamogordo. Who knows. They were unidentified flying objects.
The most inexplicable sighting I've experienced happened one night--my son and I argue about what time, was it dusk or full dark just after dusk, we can't agree. I was sitting at my computer and I felt compelled to go outside and look at the sky. The experience was very much like when the Holy Spirit speaks to me--so I think the One asking me to go outside was Him. I stood in the lane in front of the house and a gigantic fireball came from the south, flew over the pecan tree on the west side of my house and headed toward a small community north of us where it started to drift toward the ground--I thought, I'm going to drive over there and look where it crashed--only, it didn't crash, it suddenly shot straight up into the sky and disappeared going northerly, but mostly upward.
I ran into the house and called for my sons and husband to come out and look. One of my sons and my husband came out and while we were waiting, a second fire ball came, also from the south, over the pecan tree. It seemed to slow down over our lane, then made a sharp right turn, and zipped to the east super fast--gone.
Neither of these made a sound or had tails, like comets or meteors have tails. I don't actually know how big they were because I don't know how high up in the air they were; there was no point of reference to compare them to. They could have been only about the size of a large van or they could have been gigantic, which was my first impression. Later I decided that they were angels, not alien space craft.
But if aliens exist, they would have to come to earth to meet Jesus because He died here once for all, Romans 6:10.
It is my firm belief that advanced science and technology cannot exist without faith in God. The Romans has some pretty advanced technology, and rudimentary beginnings of science, but capped at a certain level, so did the Egyptians and the Aztecs. Sometimes more advance technology than we realize, but science lagging far behind. No, science and technology are not one and the same. They might go hand in hand, they might work together, but they are not the same thing. Technology is making stuff work, science is working to understand how stuff works.
Basically, I don't believe human beings can think straight unless they have a relationship with God. (You can try to argue with me about that if you want to, but please, don't waste your breath or have an emotional trauma over the fact that I am not going to argue with you.)
Not that a relationship with God guarantees human beings can think straight, it's just that without Him we may start out well, but eventually we'll end up in Loony-ville. There are always exceptions, of course. Therefore, the aliens, if they exist, must have some kind of relationship with God, I envision perhaps similar to Abraham, before the Law.
So, God encourages the aliens of Over the Edge to develop space travel so they can come to planet earth and meet Jesus. That's the foundational principle under Over the Edge--which, is fiction, but hopefully, like all really good fiction, is also truth.
Theological Principle: Human Life Has Intrinsic Value
It is rather disconcerting, after having listened to Linda Moulton Howe and others, to hear that aliens are here and they want our genetic material because they've mucked up theirs. Theories float around that aliens have underground bases on planet earth, on the dark side of the moon and under the ice in Antarctica. They have captured some of us and do experiments on those unfortunate souls. I don't care how much some of these UFOologists are enamored with aliens, I don't think capturing humans and doing experiments on them is good behavior. There are also those theorists who tell us that several groups of alien beings exist and some of those groups are at war with each other. Peachy. What fun to be stuck in the middle of a war not of your own making. But for my purposes, this story line is disturbing because one of the themes of Over the Edge is the value of human life and that theme is brought to the fore by the premise that humans on a distant planet are dying out due to a genetic mutation and have to come back to earth to get humans who are unaffected and take them back to save their people. Ugh. Similar to the theories about aliens. I heard about those theories after I already invested considerable world building into my series and a published novel (there is one out of print, but I'm going to rewrite it). I'm not starting over now, but just for the record: I have no idea if aliens really exist, never mind if they are here trying to get DNA samples from humans and animals on our planet.As created in the image of God beings, all human creatures have intrinsic, infinite, eternal value in whatever physical form they may manifest, whether that is a fertilized egg, a disabled person, a terminally ill person, a baby or a healthy adult. Over the Edge explores that theme in varying degrees in varying ways. It is one of the primary themes of the series.
Perichoresis and the Image of God
This section is difficult to write, even though I've pondered it for years. Get Lies We Believe About God, by that heretic, WM. Paul Young, the author of the scandalous book, The Shack. (Don't you know every prominent and moderately prominent Christian leader who's lived in the 20th and 21st centuries is a heretic? That's what people on the internet say.) I would love to type out about four paragraphs of the chapter titled: "God is a Prude" because they tie in with what I'm about to discuss in this section.Let me digress for a few minutes.
Sex in the Bible
You are aware that the Bible sometimes verges on X-rated and is often R-rated, aren't you?
(Want hot and heavy poetry, try reading Song of Songs.)
I mean, seriously. Imagine a movie script writer is pitching a script he's (I use "he" as the generic pronoun; I refuse to be politically correct) written to you, the producer. What would you make of this movie: 1) a king tells a heroic shepherd/warrior, "You can marry my daughter if you bring me two hundred Philistine foreskins," (I Samuel 18), 2) battles scenes follow including the required after death surgeries, 3) the shepherd/warrior dumps the pile of two hundred foreskins at the feet of the king, 4) the shepherd/warrior marries the gorgeous babe. Got that movie playing in your mind? Will you be able to sell that show to a Christian audience who wants all their entertainment rated "G"? Ok. Moving on.
How's this for a movie? Tamar married one of Judah's older sons and wanted some kids, but her husband was so rotten God had to kill him. After the son's death, his father, Judah, ordered the next younger brother to marry her. These days we consider that practically incest. CUT! Can't put that scene in the movie. Anyway, Tamar married the next younger brother, Onan, but he squirted his semen on the ground instead of--yeah, ok, CUT. Can't show that scene. Next, God decides Onan should join his brother in Sheol, but Tamar still had no child. At this point Judah decided he's finished giving sons to marry Tamar, but he didn't tell Tamar that, what he told her was he'd give Tamar his youngest boy to marry, she just had to wait until he grew up. (CUT! Can't run that scene in your movie. Can't be promising to marry a little boy to a woman old enough to be his mother--not in a Christian themed movie. Moving on.). The kid grew up, but Judah kept stalling. Tamar, finally fed up, disguised herself as a prostitute and stood on the side of the road where Judah would be walking on his way to shear his sheep. Judah found her attractive to her and fooled around with her in the bushes, but when it's time to pay up, he can't. Tamar asked for his staff and a couple of other identifying items as promise he'd pay her when he had the money. He gave those to her. A few months later, when Tamar is discovered pregnant, Judah wanted to burn her to death for fooling around on her intended, that is the youngest son. But she produced his staff and he sheepishly had to admit he was the guy who got her pregnant. He rescinded the order to have her killed and Tamar earned grudging respect.
That's just two of the X and R rated stories in the Bible. There's also Diana and the whole city of gentile men who wanted Israelite women who are conned into getting circumcised, all at the same time, so they'd be fit to marry the hot women of Israel, but Diana's brothers swoop down on the city and kill them all. And Sampson. And king David and Bathsheba.
Obviously God is not a prude.
Christians are the prudes. So where is the boundary between being a hedonist and being real about life and sex and romance? God has to show us where boundaries should be, but are we smart enough to understand what He's told us? Not if we don't dig deeper into His Word.
In an effort to explain the intimacy God wants to share with each believer, Paul employs the term: perichoresis. Perichoresis is most easily exemplified in our material experience by loving, committed sexual intercourse--a more precise definition will be shared below. God designed sexuality to be expressed between one man and one woman unified into one flesh, committed to one another for life. Doesn't matter what era of human history you want to examine, we humans fail to fulfill God's ideal for sex. Even in committed marriage, the everyday drudgery of life can interfere and sex ends up being less than God intended. Sex is so sacred that Jesus said to even look at a woman with the idea of tearing her clothes off was to commit adultery. And yes, you can commit adultery even if you're not married by committing it against your future spouse. That means, pornography is sin. Doesn't matter how you rationalize it.
One of my goals, especially with the romance novels, is to explore the concept of and encourage people to not settle for cheap, easy sex, but to reach for the higher experience of committed intimacy, which is a picture of what our relationship with God is to look like. God isn't a prude! Through Paul, He uses the, especially spiritual aspects, of the human experience of committed, sexual intimacy in marriage to show us what He wants with each of us. We are so conditioned by the world that the first thing that comes to mind when sexual intimacy is mentioned is pornographic in nature. Some of us even wonder if its ok in marriage. We are repelled by the idea of that kind of relationship with God. The idea that physical experience is somehow evil, regardless of intention, is a Gnostic concept and Gnosticism has infected the church, even though it's warned against in the Bible. Some of us who are against Gnosticism unwittingly hold views tainted by it; aspects of it permeate Christian culture.
In my fiction I want to be real about how people feel when falling in love and learning about perichoresis. I don't want to shy away from the things God didn't shy away from and I don't want to glorify the things He rejects--that's what I want, but I might not always succeed.
Many young people, even believers, have been infected with either a kind of Pharisaical, legalistic attitude about sex--the extreme of this attitude is when a person is willing to literally cut off parts of the body in order to stop sexual feelings (a version of Gnosticism that loathes the physical aspects of life)--or a casual attitude that places so little value on the physical experience that they rationalize how whatever physical interaction with the opposite sex they feel good about is fine based on some worldly concept of what's ok. Believers even rationalize how pornography, which is actually anti-sex, anti-intimacy is ok. This is what happens when the church will not address the issue of sexuality and intimacy in a real, meaningful way: young people are left to their own devices, receiving information from the world and the church looks like a bunch of doddering fools.
We are all enticed and led away by our unbridled desires when we fall into sin. Taking captive every thought before it can build a fortress in the mind is the remedy. But it's the older members of the congregation who are supposed to be training the younger ones on love, marriage, sex and intimacy and when that doesn't happen the world will do it and failure, mistakes and pain occur.
That's the background, now on to the topic: Perichoresis is mutual interpenetration without loss of individual personhood.
God is One Spiritual Being composed of Three. One of God was knit into a human body, lived on planet earth some 30+ years, was crucified, died and was buried and has been living in a resurrected Human Body for 2000 years. Kat Kerr, who claims to have been to Heaven many times, describes God in this way, (my paraphrase): The Holy Spirit, separately, has many layers so that when you receive Him, you receive all of Him, though you only receive one layer of Him. And these Three Beings, though separate, can step inside one another, the layers overlapping, interpenetrating and co-mingling without loss of individuality. And if you've received Jesus as Lord and the Holy Spirit, you also are co-mingled and joined into this Being. Now how much you taste of this reality is entirely up to you and the depth of your desire to experience it. You can choose to live primarily as a material being on a shallow spiritual plane, or you can choose to live in perichoresis in God.
Those of us who name Jesus as Lord, are said to be "in Christ," that is He is in us and we are in Him--perichoresis, John 14:20; Galatians 2:20 and others. Being LOVE God will not compel us to perichoresis, though He longs for ever deeper relations with us.
God is the original and ultimate Romantic! He invented sex, sexual love, romance, marriage, two becoming one flesh--there is nothing dirty about these, they were part of God's gifts to humanity from day one of human existence. The Lord Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, Creator of the Universe, the One Who Sustains All Things by His Powerful Word, that One, became a Human Being who plodded along in sandals in the dirt, lived in houses without running water or central air, in the ultimate act of humble, sacrificial Love, to woo broken humanity to Himself and become One with each who would receive Him. To achieve that He suffered humiliation, torture and death which paid the penalty for Adam's treason in the Garden of Eden, and reconcile us to Himself. He then rose from the dead, for after identifying with us, not only taking upon Himself our penalties, but we also are raised with Him from the dead. Have you ever meditated on the absolute romance of that? Ponder that for a few minutes, please, before reading on.
We are created in God's image. We are, in a sense, idols of God--that is, we are the physical representation of Him on the earth. (Even in our fallen state, we still retain the image of God in the core of our being no matter how many layers of sin cover it up. Might be rather difficult to imagine that given how some human creatures behave.) N.T. Wright talks about this concept--the image of God, the likeness of God: "demuth," a word often translated as "idol," the physical representation of God. We have a responsibility to one another to reflect God to one another: our spouses, our friends, our children, the world. The more we surrender to the Lord God, the better we reflect His image to the world. We do not lose our identities, it is perichoresis, coupled with demuth, in action.
My romance novels are intended to portray a man and woman picture of God in human relationships. The man represents one part of the image of God, the woman another part, together in marriage they form yet another image of God. Causey Lindo, in Love From the Stars, exhibits God's love for Violet through his patience and unconditional love. In Give Her the Stars, Lendar will give his all to protect his beloved, a model of Christ-like behavior. Perichoresis: the hero or the heroine functions as the image of God to the other, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes taking turns, sometimes primarily one rather than the other, but their souls and hearts layering together into one without loss of individual identity.
The intimacy I try to convey is the kind of intimacy of perichoresis, rather than what one typically reads in a romance novel which focuses on the sex act as the ultimate connection. I am going for emotional, rather than physical, which for some, means the feelings that come up from their hearts to their consciousness while interacting with the story feels threatening and they then label it as too sexy. Fear of intimacy can exist with great sex, as it is possible to divorce sex from intimacy--then it becomes a physical act more similar to animals mating than to perichoresis, the desire of God's heart, the unity of souls.
Living in these earthly tents of mud we grow used to a certain level of dullness. Some of us try to get out of the dullness with drugs or wild sex or extreme sports. (Eating too much chocolate might be a symptom of longing for something more from life.) Instead we may find dullness comfortable and normal, but God always calls us to go deeper, seek richer, more surrendered unity both with Him and with our spouses and in different ways with other loved ones, other believers in Christ and with friends and the world. He loves even His enemies more deeply than we can imagine.
I want to provoke the reader to seek deeper relationships with God and loved ones. After all, the only thing you can take with you to Heaven is LOVE.
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