The Elegance of God

Dates = Tuesday, March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, “darkness” was over the surface of the deep. Today, cosmologists tell us that roughly 95 percent of the universe’s mass-energy is invisible—what we call dark matter and dark energy—unseen and only known by its effects. What does the presence of darkness—biblically, theologically, and scientifically—reveal about the structure of creation? What might it suggest about God’s self-restraint alongside His deliberate self-disclosure? How do light and darkness preserve human freedom? What if there were no such thing as darkness?

Dates = Tuesday, April 7, 14, 21, 28 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ There is only one place for anyone ever to find God, and that place is reality. Is God confined by reality or is the nature of reality defined by God? How does truth correlate with reality, logic, and meaning? If God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness whatsoever, what does that imply about the safety of exposure before Him? Why does light feel unbearable when resisted? Why does darkness require maintenance—secrecy, silence, and avoidance—while light sustains itself? Is the structure of creation such that light naturally exposes, heals, and orders what darkness can only distort and conceal? How does Jesus’ self-attestation, “I am the Light of the world” authorize His claim, “You are the light of the world”? How might Jesus’ followers become far more courageous to stand in truth if they were convinced that light truly excels the darkness, not only in principle, but also in the lived pressures of everyday life?

Dates = Tuesday, May 5, 12, 19, 26 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Through the disciplined use of mathematics, physicists have discovered that the universe is governed by four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—and that if any one of these were missing or even slightly different, the universe could collapse or fly apart. Cosmic forces stabilize our time/space domain. What does the intelligibility of mathematical order reveal about the structure of creation? Is it reasonable to wonder if God is a mathematician? How does math inform technology? At what point, if any, does the language of mathematics conflict with the nature of reality?

Dates = Tuesday, June 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Mathematically, musical harmony arises from simple numerical ratios. Yet music can nonverbally communicate comedy, joy, grief, tension, and resolution. Isn’t it amazing that an abstract number can translate into meaning that moves people emotionally and forms them spiritually? What aspects of God might we be neglecting by failing to ask better questions about beauty, rhythm, harmony, and pageantry? Scripture portrays creation itself as responsive—singing, clapping, rejoicing. How might we, as Christians, fall more in love with God if we took more seriously how musical, artful, and lyrical God is?

Dates = Tuesday, July 7, 14, 21, 28 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Why do we find it remarkable when a miracle interrupts nature, but rarely when the human body quietly heals itself? What does the body’s capacity to mend suggest about the structure of salvation? Why are spiritual wounds—shame, betrayal, grief—more difficult to repair? How does the gospel confront us in our woundedness? What must be exposed in us before we can be healed? Do spiritual wounds heal differently or similarly to bodily wounds? In what sense are we healed by the wounds of Christ? Scripture says that those who are healed by Christ will one day reign with Him. What assumptions about our present status does that sharp truth overthrow?

Dates = Tuesday, August 4, 11, 18, 25 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ In I Corinthians, the apostle Paul calls death “the last enemy” and “the sting of sin.” What is lost when we soften death into a “passing,” and how does that cultural softening diminish what Jesus Christ actually confronted on the cross? Why does the Bible portray sin as enslaving, rather than merely as rule-breaking? In what ways does sin distort perception, desire, and trust—and how does the fear of death intensify sin’s power? What is the qualitative difference between suffering that results as a consequence of sin, and suffering that does not? Is the problem of evil, at root, the problem of human suffering? ​​

Dates = Tuesday, September 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Scripture teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and that fools despise wisdom. How does reverence for God differ from anxiety, and why does Scripture insist that wisdom cannot begin without proper fear? What happens when we rush to analyze God or attempt to explain Him ourselves—when Scripture tells us that the Only Begotten Son has alone explained Him (John 1:18)? Is it wise to say, “God told me . . . ” What if different people’s claims about what God is saying do not match? How can believers today earnestly desire to prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:1) without confusing their own impressions with divine utterance? To what extent have we trivialized our view of God’s holy standards and His clear commandments? What does our resistance to silence before God reveal about our estimation of ourselves? ​​

Dates = Tuesday, October 6, 13, 20, 27 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Jesus does not say, “Come feel close to me.” He says, “Follow me.” Does the biblical image of walking with God—of consciously moving through life in quiet communion with Him—awaken in you a readiness to yield, such that you consent to walking in a manner worthy of His calling? Or has “walking with God” largely come to mean doing as we please while presuming upon God’s grace to cover whatever in us remains unyielded? What is the structure of life with God? Is there any objective moral and spiritual architecture to it, or is it self-defined?

Dates = Tuesday, November 3, 10, 14, 24 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ Psalm 103 assures us that God’s sovereignty rules over all. Almighty God is Lord over Time and Space, and Life and Death. Why, then, does it appear as if no Deity is in charge? How does God’s patience with evil differ from indifference to it? Is moral order woven into the fabric of creation? How reliable is general revelation in the form of natural theology? Though the English word, Providence, never occurs in Scripture, theologically we can know that God is faithfully guiding history from beginning to end toward total, final justice. If God governs creation as a living story rather than a static script, what does that imply about fate, chance, foreknowledge, providence, and predestination?

Dates = Tuesday, December 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 Time = 4:30 - 6:10 pm PST Cost = This service is available exclusively to subscribers of the Gold or Platinum Plan.  If you have not subscribed yet, please subscribe here.(https://rightonmission.org/the-elegance-of-god#elegance-pg-subscription) ​​ When Scripture commands us to pour out our hearts before God, is prayer meant to anesthetize anxiety—or to offload it, so that we may live without fear? How might our inability to love others as ourselves be traced back to anxieties we have never honestly placed before God? If we say we trust God, yet still organize our lives around avoiding loss, exposure, or suffering, what exactly are we trusting Him for? What is the difference between hoping for outcomes and hoping in God Himself? If anxiety shrinks our world, how do faith and hope expand it, especially when we starbathe and bask in the elegance of God?