Why the Triune God is so close to life 

The idea of ​​a triune God is abstract and complicated. But it has a lot to do with our lives. 

Gerhard Beham, Catholic Dean in Wolfratshausen

© Photo: MM Archives

"God, it's complicated!" - that's how we sometimes sigh when we don't understand anything. "God, you are complicated!" - that is how we sigh as Christians if we want to understand the teaching about the Trinity of God.

The idea of ​​a god in three people is actually very close to life: Because God is not thought of as static, at rest, but communicatively and dialogically. More precisely: in his trinity we worship a "sociable" God who is determined by love. As is well known, love requires at least two people who are connected by a certain spirit, namely the spirit of love.

While the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre comes to the conclusion that fellow human beings are more likely to become hell because we can make life mutually hell by hostility, the Christian answer to this is: No, loneliness is hell! And man overcomes this in the image of God by giving his fellow man an inkling of God's love. Therefore, if we imagine God not as lonely, but as love, then God's love needs a partner. Because love includes both being-for-oneself and becoming one: two independent beings that experience oneness thanks to love.

The Christian God is sociable 

The triune-triune image of God fulfills two basic human needs, so to speak: first, the desire to realize oneself, and secondly, the longing to find fellowship. In this sense, our image of God is of course complicated because it directs the diverging tendencies of the individual and the communal towards a unity that one must constantly find new.

But is that different from complicated in our lives? Let us only think of marriage: unity does not arise through the amalgamation of two personalities, but because everyone can and must remain independent. The Triune God is therefore a complicated mystery, but not in a negative sense. God often seems contradictory and distant to us, but at the same time he comes close to us in the experience of love! God is life that flows completely.

That was also the experience of God in Jesus, who wants to take us into his relationship with Heavenly Father. God wants us as fellow lovers! Because God himself is devotion, we cannot find our salvation by isolating and delimiting ourselves. This also obliges us to dialogue with other religions.

Read also: The common foundation of our faith

Basically, every time we make the sign of the cross, we can be reminded of it: we are drawn into the love between father and son through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a combination of giving yourself away and being given gifts. And we become players in the divine love plan! So maybe we should sigh better: "My God, what are you so lovingly complicated!"