In this episode, Nate talks with Pastoral Resident Ryan Gawrych about New City Catechism Question 5:
What else did God create?
God created all things by his powerful Word, and all his creation was very good; everything flourished under his loving rule.
They discuss the importance of God being creator, and especially that creation is good, though sin does affect it. They also talk about the importance of culture and about engaging with the world that we live in rather than retreating from it.
And, Ranger Rick is still apparently around and you can check it out here.
In this episode, Nate talks with Pastoral Resident Ryan Gawrych about New City Catechism Question 5:
What else did God create?
God created all things by his powerful Word, and all his creation was very good; everything flourished under his loving rule.
They discuss the importance of God being creator, and especially that creation is good, though sin does affect it. They also talk about the importance of culture and about engaging with the world that we live in rather than retreating from it.
And, Ranger Rick is still apparently around and you can check it out here.
Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, nate Claiborne, and today I'm here with pastoral resident Ryan Garich. How are we doing, ryan? Good, nate, thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's good to be back with you. It's been I don't know how long it's been since we've done a podcast together. That's more me than you. Don't take it personally.
Speaker 2:Well, the last podcast I did, I think I probably would have recorded by myself. I think it was on Stefan Posse's book Pilgrims and Presby oh, that's right which people?
Speaker 1:if you haven't listened to that, should go back and check it out and just scroll back in our episode list from us, from last spring.
Speaker 2:I want to say I actually think it was in October.
Speaker 1:Okay, Sometime in October you can say, there's a huge lag between when you interviewed him and then when we processed it in the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yep, there was.
Speaker 1:I think you're right, it was last fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's there, people can get it. Yeah, you're right, though, with communities right around the corner, it'd be a great podcast to listen to, because Posse has a lot of great stuff about what it means to live as a priest.
Speaker 1:That's right, and so you're giving us. There's an announcement coming up on Sunday about communities, and kind of what we're talking about here with these catechism questions does tie into it as well, but we are going to focus in on the question at hand, which is catechism question five what else did God create? And the long answer is God created all things by his powerful word and all his creation was very good. Everything flourished under his loving rule. The shorter version is just that God created all things and all his creation was very good. So, ryan, as we're thinking about this question, what is I'm going to say? What is the theology of this question? But what's some or a theological lesson that we can take away from this question and answer?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's two things. I like the shorter answer for ease of memorization, especially as a father of four kids. There you go. So God's created everything and it's good. That's very simple. But what you were reading in the longer one actually really liked too, because I'm sad to see that part about everything flourishing under God's rule disappeared, because I do think that's important.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't we just touch on the two things that are left out real quick and then we can focus more of our time on the short answer? Because, yeah, the flourishing under his loving rule. We're losing that. But then we're also losing the how God created by his powerful word. And so it's not that God had to stoop down and fashion things, it's that he just spoke things into existence in Genesis one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we speak after God, and one of the results of sin is that our mouths are actually closed so we don't speak the things we ought to speak in and the way that we ought to speak them, which I think is important. So we don't image our Creator in that way. But the work of Christ reverses that, so that Hermann Bobing has said he unlocks our tongues so that we can speak again as God speaks. But I do think that's important, that God is a God who speaks and creates by his word, which means that the word that we have now in Scripture is also something that's that can be interacted with that's living, that's doing something, even as we're interacting it with it through thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is kind of. I mean, for us that's how it works is I can't create by speaking, but there is a sense in which I can create by thinking about an idea, but then I have to actually physically do something to bring it about, and in God's case it's his thought goes straight to speech, to the thing happening, without any intermediate issues.
Speaker 2:Right. And then I love that idea of everything flourishing under God's rule, which is anti-culture in essence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you could say, if we properly imaged God kind of what we talked about in question four there, things would continue to flourish under our loving rule, but the fall and sin kind of derailed that whole process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, old Testament is a great place to go for that.
Speaker 1:Israel's a beautiful picture of what God wanted for his people and the ways in which they failed, and we fail even today yeah, so okay, so we were kind of dealing with the pieces from the longer answer but then focusing on the shorter answer that God created all things and this creation was very good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe we land on what it means to say that God's creation is very good for a second. Genesis 131 says and God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. So it's one thing to read that. It's another thing to actually ask ourselves okay, since that is true, what does it mean for me as a Christian? How do I live in light of this world that's been named by God? Is something that's good?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And how does the fall affect that? Does it affect it in any way?
Speaker 1:In any significant way. Yeah, because we don't want to say that creation was very good. The fall happened. Now creation is very bad.
Speaker 2:Right. Craig Bartholomew has said sin doesn't have the power to make bad what God's made good that's a good quote yeah it's always good. He also distinguishes I think this is actually from Augustine, it's more Augustinian but between structure and direction when we talk about the fall. So the structure of everything is still intact, it still remains good, but directionally, things sort of spray off into all different directions that they weren't intended to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think some of it is we have to keep in mind. It could be easy to just say with the fall, well, it's just humans that have sinned, everything else is unaffected. But then we get to Romans and talks about all creation groaning and we talk we're reading through the curse. There's these breakdowns of relationships that are affecting everything in the world, in nature, and so I like that distinction between structure and direction. Structurally, things are still intact, but the direction and the way things unfold is now not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:to use the title of a different book on sin Right, and that's I think it's important as Christians and as parents. As a father, I want my children to know that. I want them to know that they live in a world that is fallen, but there's still much that is good about it and it doesn't mean that there are some bad areas now and some good areas, it means that all of it still remains, as we just said, good but misdirected.
Speaker 2:So I want to teach them how to. Well, I want them one to know that they can still live and work in this world, that they don't need to have some sort of like retreatist philosophy on life as a Christian in which they need to remain secluded or inside their house at all times. So I would want them to know that. But then when they are in the world, how does a Christian live? We just preached through Philippians 4 and Philippians 3. Paul calls us lights. Jesus says you don't have a lamp lit in order to cover it. In Matthew's Gospel, you bring that light out to the world so it can do what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Leading to the flourishing you could say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, leading to the flourishing the language from the first part of the question here. If we're imaging God in his good creation, I mean we could even say too, the structure, direction applies to us as people. Right, we are part of God's creation. It's not in some sense like creation is this thing that's out there and then I'm not part of it. In some sense I'm part of God's creation, but I'm also kind of an intermediary in some sense, because there's my physicality. My body is a physical thing that is created. That ties me to the earth, ties me to nature, ties me to the rest of the created world. But then I also have a spirit and there's, so there's part of me that is heavenly, that is from God, that is so I'm sort of in between the two things.
Speaker 1:And if we're really taking this image language seriously, we're supposed to reflect God to the rest of the world. We're also kind of this, we're priests in some sense, just to take back your language of the interview with Stefan Pah. So we're supposed to be mediators and we're supposed to bring God's loving rule to all of creation. And because of the fall where it's, structurally things haven't changed, but directionality has changed. People don't image God, people don't reflect their creator, or they even deny that there is a creator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's actually really helpful to name ourselves, as obvious as it may seem, as part of the creation, both as good structurally and Less than good or bad, direct directionally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the reason I think that's helpful is because there can be a tendency, I think, for us to pull ourselves or view ourselves as different in a non-helpful way from the world in which everyone who's not a Christian is bad and we're the good ones, and that's not a helpful stance, because what we believe actually is that we need Jesus just as much as the person In this building right next to us who don't know Jesus always.
Speaker 2:So that's really helpful to to remember that, so we don't take on this sort of like elitist posture, personality in which We've got something they don't have and then, because they're there, maybe actually want to go over just real quickly, some texts in scripture Called the Contra Moondum texts, which mean again, it's Latin for against the world, and I think this is important because Ben's gonna be preaching through the Sermon on the Mount this weekend, and that's where we find many of those texts. Yeah, and what they do is they sort of they can foster in us this idea that we should actually the world is something that should be avoided. That, as Christians, we should flee from the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'll go ahead and just read a couple of those so that we can bounce some ideas off that. But yeah, yeah. So an example that would be Matthew 6, 19 to 20 do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth when moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. So it seems as though Jesus is saying Earth is bad, heavens good. Just keep your eyes on heaven and don't look at anything down here. As far as that and so far as that's possible, that that is one way that we could walk away or interpret that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another one Matthew 6, 31 to 33. Therefore, do not be anxious saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear, for the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God. So it again seems like Jesus is drawing a distinction between the two Such that one is you good and the other is bad. But we somehow have to hold the tension between Jesus saying the kingdom is what matters and it's good, and Genesis 131, all that God made is very good. Yeah, and that doesn't change. So these are both good things. The kingdom is doing something to that original good thing that is now misdirected, and it's redeeming and recreating and making it making it all that it was intended to be again. Yeah, so I'm going to stop talking there for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's helpful. Maybe one way that we could simplify it just a little bit is even saying some of these texts that are talking about the world, they're very rarely meaning the creation, like the natural world. We might use language like that. It's probably closer to something like culture and just a simple definition of culture is culture is what humans make of the world, and I use the world and so I don't know if that helps, but you know, it's things humans make and so the world, because of what we just talked about with structure and direction, the direction, the way we make things of the world, can be corrupted because of Satan, and it's also helpful to think that it's not just what humans make, but it's what God makes.
Speaker 2:God is the first culture maker. He creates a garden and fills it with people and animals and things, and so he creates this mini society right there, which is helpful, because if we're to take that at face value, then culture is not something to flee from either. Yeah, in and of itself, it's not bad In and of itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just has been corrupted and so there's. We shouldn't be afraid of engaging the culture around us. We shouldn't be afraid of studying creation. I mean, when scientists are doing what they're doing, studying the natural world, as they would call it, they're studying God's creation.
Speaker 1:They don't necessarily think of it. If they're not believers, they don't think of it in that sense. But there's a lot of valuable insights and it's things that couldn't even move you to worship from some of the ways scientists are describing things. I think of a. There's a famous illustration we don't have it here but we could. Maybe we can maybe find it for the show and it's where John Piper talks about the kids magazine called Ranger Rick. I don't know if you're, it was maybe after your time, it was big in the 80s, early 90s, and I can't remember if it's from a believer's point of view. But it's just this magazine that just has all these. You know great, you know rundowns of animals and plants and all these things in nature for kids. But it's like you know you're reading some of these things and it's like, yeah, it's just it's giving you descriptions of God's very good creation and it's you know it's should move us to worship, to worship the creator is all powerful and creating these good things.
Speaker 2:If we have anything like that now. Ranger Rick is probably not still around and I bet if you went to find one of those magazines you'd probably have to pay like $500.
Speaker 1:We will, we'll do a little digging and we'll put something in the show notes for you, but I just I remember him talking about that. I was like, oh yeah, I remember reading those growing up and that's not exactly the way I thought about it as a kid, but I'm sure there's, there's got to be something similar to that that just helps you engage with the creation and just see the wisdom of God in some of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I just want to say from those, those texts that appear to show Jesus as being against the world, that before he move on, that's not what is happening there. Jesus is concerned mostly with idolatry and primary allegiances, which means what are you giving your heart to? He's not trying to say the world's bad, flee from it. And that's important because there's a way in which we can adopt that posture and stance, which is not helpful as a Christian, neither for ourselves, but definitely not for a neighbor.
Speaker 1:For sure. And there's, yeah, when we think about we've kind of skipped around a little bit because we've we didn't exactly ask question to how does this make us counterculture for the common good, but we've kind of talked about it it's. There's something countercultural about believing that it is creation, and by believing that it is creation that God made, it allows us to engage it in a way that's going to lead to hopefully flourishing for those around us, which is the common good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's countercultural, as you just said in that. Well, let's just take what would be the impulse of I hate to even make the distinction between sacred and secular, because it kind of goes against what I'm saying but if we were to just use it for practical purposes the term secular or culture or an unbeliever, what would you? What would you say their response to something? Seeing something they don't like in culture might be. I think it's appropriate to say that our natural impulse is probably to avoid something we don't like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, either avoid it or try to get rid of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, but what this actually allows us to do is to move into the places and to the things that we don't like in order to see some sort of transformation and redemption happen in that space. So it's counter-cultural in that we can actually move into these spaces where culture might anticipate that we would move away or retreat from those spaces. So, in other words, it's a way of saying that it's good for Christians to be in many spaces and many places within culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's how we're gonna see this flourishing come to our city, come to our neighborhoods, come to all the places that we are involved in is by actually being in those places. If we retreat from the world, if we leave that to the non-Christian, the parts of the world that don't believe in God, then it's gonna continue to be shaped in a certain kind of way, and so we want to enter into those spaces and places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's probably also important to say that in naming this, we're not at the same time neglecting the reality of malformation and the importance of formation. So it's one thing to say go into culture and be light, but we can't ignore the reality that there are spaces in our cultural moment here in Orlando even in which, if we were to move into them, we could be malformed in some significant ways, even unknowingly. So what I'm saying is there's a balance there, like be light and at the same time, understand that your light can be diminished in some ways without you knowing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I think even that, right there, that's a good plug for community, just in the sense of when we're saying move into these spaces, we're not saying do it on your own, we're saying do it with your community, your community moves into these spaces and so there's power in a group of people moving in for potential engagement, transformative effect. As opposed to we're not saying, hey, you, ryan, by yourself, go transform your community by engaging everyone. That's not really going to work, but you and your community can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. That's very, very important. You can't go at it alone. I think that's part of even what Paul was saying. We unpacked last week in Philippians 4 is that he points to himself. He says these things that you've seen me do, practice them. So it's implied, then, that we're watching others do this and we're doing it with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think that's probably a great place to wrap up here, as we're thinking about the importance of engaging the creation and engaging culture, even as an extension of that, and so I think that we didn't ask the question, but I think we answered. What does this mean for our discipleship formation? Is it means we engage with our communities, but our communities are able to engage the created world and the culture that is in that world? Well, so, ryan, it was a pleasure talking with you about question 5. I look forward to. Hopefully it's there's not as long of a gap between this time and next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't see that in the future. Okay, see much smaller.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think I do. We'll talk again soon.