There is an exhausting irony in serving Christ. We suffer defeats, yet those defeats empower victory.

My first experience in ministry was serving under a pastor who habitually lied—even when nothing was at stake. Staff and committee meetings became a hall of mirrors. I rarely knew what was real.

Many Christians have two gods who serve different purposes in their spiritual lives.

They have a god who is angry at them. This god motivates them to quit sinful habits and reform their lifestyles. They use the “god of wrath” to get serious about personal change. I can watch them serve this god as they use violent, demeaning language about themselves, place themselves under severe accountability, and describe their sins with exaggerated loathing.

Bear with me in a theoretical post.

Recently, I have been writing about classical theism, especially its impact on our emotional lives. God’s absolute independence (his aseity) is a source of vital strength for believers. Many say that God’s aseity destroys any idea that we can have a relationship with him. But in their effort to describe a two-way, give-and-take relationship with God, they blur God’s identity with ours. I am arguing that their concept of relationships does not exist at all.

My family’s relationship with Shayna changed when she got in the car accident. She didn’t want the change, nor did we. But it happened. When she was in the hospital, we could talk to her, hold her hand, kiss her on the forehead. But she could not respond. When she died, our relationship was severed entirely in this life.

One of the accusations against classical theism is that an absolutely independent God offers no relationship with us. He is too Other, too remote. But I have found that otherness is a problem in our human relationships too.

My phone started lighting up as I finished a meeting. Calls and texts came in from my son Dylan and a key leader in our church. The leader’s daughter Shayna, Dylan’s girlfriend, had been in a car accident and was unresponsive. As the news sank in, my mind started racing, my breathing changed, and my heart rate went up. I was suddenly afraid.

One of the most important theological events of our time is unfolding today, a rediscovery of the nature of God. The rediscovery is emerging out of a debate among evangelicals that will have consequences for generations to come. It is also a personal rediscovery, helping me decide in a fresh way what it means to be a Christian.