Centering Truths
By John Gavazzoni

Imagine an old farm wagon. It has the usual four wheels, but instead of all the spokes being of equal length, and meeting together uniformly at that central point through which the two axles ought to pass, in this case each of the wheels has spokes of varying lengths, and each one, while having that similarity, differs from the other three in the complex of its spokes' lengths.

Now if only one wheel was thusly asymmetrical, we would have a wagon threatening to shake itself apart when in motion, especially the faster it went, but with all four wheels in the afore-described condition, any occupants would be subject to a severe spine-traumatizing, teeth-rattling ride even on the smoothest road, before the wagon would finally shake itself apart.

Various concepts, imagined to provide accurate centering reference points for a true knowledge of God and His purposes, have been pressed upon the minds of believers down through the history of the empirical church by a hierarchy analogous to our comical wagon, having a like-effect upon the hearts, souls, minds and strengths of the faithful journeying on in such a contraption. Not to detract from the seriousness of the situation, I just have to say that such a wagon would do the three stooges proud.

Proceeding upon the principle that to have a solid knowledge of what is genuine is the best preparation for recognizing what is counterfeit, I propose to my fellow saints what I consider to be central, and centering truths that stand in true alignment with the faith of Christ in our spiritual journey into the depths of Christ, and in Him, into the depths of our Heavenly Father:

1. God is God, and is to be worshiped as God, meaning that He is THE ONE whose very nature calls to us to ascribe to Him a majesty that makes it unthinkable that He should be denied the desires of His heart because of the failures, rebellion, ignorance, preferences, and the (actually non-determining) determinations of men. His holy desires, perfectly guided by His unerring wisdom, together determining the content and progress of His purpose, will be brought to their glorious conclusion through the exercise of His will by the strength of His might.
2. His desires are holy because they are the desires of perfect love. Such love, in the operation of its intrinsic givingness (grace), by nature, will not stop short of bestowing upon the entirety of His creation all the glorious goodness of its infinite resources. That is, God will not settle for his creation to have less than all that He is. All inferior concepts of the meaning of "God is love" are to be renounced as fundamentally deceptive.
3. This divine love brought forth "the Son of His love," and it is in that Son, and by that Son, that God gives all that He is as the "one God and Father of all, who is in all, and through all, and above all." The family of humanity came forth out from the family of God, the family which God is, and the two are One in the One who said, "I and my Father are One." Any true search to find and understand the love of God will ultimately lead to its embodiment in Christ. The gift of His Son, is the gift of God's love.
4. As affirmed in The Apostles Creed, it is in and by Christ, crucified, risen and seated at the right hand of God, that the living and the dead shall be judged. >From that, we are to understand the passion of Christ to be the Reality which determines ALL destiny, for God and man were joined together in Him so that the fulfillment of the desire of perfect love, and the destiny of man cannot be separated. The destiny of God and man are bound together in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, our Lord and Savior.
5. The union of God and man in Jesus Christ, is eternal and therefore indissoluble, whereas all that seeks to stand in opposition to that reality is temporal and passing. It is self-evident that the temporal must yield to the eternal even to the point of returning from its existential distortion back to what it was in God originally.