He had a carpenter working in his house who was a Christian. He asked him if he ever thought about how Jesus relates to his carpentry. "Not really," was the reply, "I guess he makes me an honest carpenter."
Kruger unpacks this:
"Is that it? Is that all we have to say to the carpenters of the world, the engineers, the designers, the artists?...Jesus will make you honest?...Is honesty the extent of the relationship between Jesus Christ and human beings?...is it reducible to mere morality?"Kruger argues that by missing the Great Dance of the Trinity, we've missed the point of Jesus' coming, downsizing it to mere forgiveness, and thus missing the point of that forgiveness: to participate in the glad beauty, power, love, and joy of the God of all things. We've been invited to swim in that River, and have it shape how we do everything in our lives.
I had a similar conversation with an art student once at my former school, VCU. "How does Jesus shape your art?" I asked him. He had no idea at first. Then he said that there was certain art that he felt wasn't good or glorifying to God--pornography basically. But he didn't just want to paint pictures of Moses, David, Jesus, Mary and/or the disciples.
So all he had was the negative, moral implication of his faith (no pornography) but he couldn't fathom the positive influence that life shared in the Land of the Trinity could have. The only positives he could come up with were boring, limiting options. He hadn't begun to consider the fact that infinite joy and beauty and grace were all around might just spark some holy creativity. No one had told him that there was such a thing.
My guess is that most of us, from cube world to elementary school teachers, to full-time parents, to students in the classroom, event to us "religious professionals" are similarly at a loss. Perhaps this accounts for our lack of energy, joy, and impact in our world.
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