Sadly, too often our forebears … reinforced violent, static, dualist, hierarchical and exclusive understandings of God. But it’s still not too late. If we open our hearts, we can feel the Spirit guiding us now to let the healing teaching of the Trinity continue its joyful revolution. Perhaps we are now ready to bear it … and to dare to practise it. Because if God is not violent, static, dualist, hierarchical or exclusive, neither should we be.
To join the movement of the Spirit is to let our trinitarian tradition continue to live, learn and grow … so the hostile one-versus-otherness of Earth can become more like the hospitable one-anotherness of heaven. From beginning to end, the Spirit leads us into vibrant diversity and joyful unity in beautiful harmony.
– from Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road By Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation and Activation, ch. 45, “The Spirit of Unity and Diversity”. It is a chapter on the doctrine of the Trinity, that the Trinity shifts our understanding away from God as violent, static, dualist, hierarchical, and exclusive. I used it (slightly altered, in its entirety) as my Trinity Sunday talk.
