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Millefagne Christine G. Matchino

Theo11 - D

“Shalom is Received by Grateful Creation”

Faith as Haight (2001) defines, is a universal human phenomenon which

means it occurs even without realizing it to come. All people live by faith, it emerges out
of the center of one’s free being and it also holds together all aspects of personality
(Haight, 2001). One must act upon and yield to a value that transcend the self. Faith was
once given by God, but how did the Israelites know about what God wants for them?
And how do they practice faith during the time of skepticism to unlock God’s purpose of
shalom?
God created the earth with order and peace, where humanity is the center
of all stories in the old testament. With God’s blessings the creation has come to life,
God said, “it was good” and God continue to nurture his creation to fulfill His purpose in
creating life in this world. God’s intention in creation is for all to experience shalom, a
Hebrew word meaning wholeness (Birch, 1985) or peace. Besides being the God who
creates, and God who blesses according to the creation, God was also stressed in the
bible as God who saves. The salvation that God offers to the Israelites from the time of
the fall to exodus until the resurrection is recognized as a way to come into a
relationship to God as a particular community of faith.
As the old testament starts to speak about what happened during the
creation, the creature will then realize and find out what it means to be given life and to
live that life in relationship with God and the rest of the created order. Being created in
the image and likeness of God is not just a gift for us because God created us with
uniqueness and a precious quality that only us possess. But as we were given a precious
gift we are also called, not only the Israelites, to a bigger responsibility. We are
commissioned to take good care for the earth, for we are created in the image and
likeness of God. As God shows His sovereignty, from the orderliness of the creation to
what we do not expect will happen, it gives us the thought of having faith to God. Being
interrelated and/or one of all of creation, every community with each other, living in
harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every creature becomes the
main/central vision of the bible. It starts with the establishment of shalom in the
Creation in Genesis.
Shalom will be hard to maintain as the brokenness of creation came.
Hebrew writers as Birch (1985) states that they knew that the wholeness of creation
which God intended was not a reality in human history. The brokenness of the creation
was the result of human freedom, along with the other gifts of creation, human freedom
was granted to the man and woman. They were given the ability to decide for
themselves, to obey or disobey what God tell them. It is a great opportunity to have
freedom but when it comes to the responsibility of living with the consequences of our
decision/choices can be hard to handle. Through the brokenness of creation, the sin will
be recognized by humankind, chaos as opposed to God’s powerful will for orderly
fruitfulness will be discuss after the fall of the man. The fall of the man will become a
way to God to promote more the faith of His creation to Him. As the Israelites feel the
pain, their sufferings they will eventually cling unto God and will be faithful to Him. As
time passes by God realizes that the only way to make His people be faithful on Him is
to let them suffer but through those sufferings He was with them, He never leaves them
and promise to save them from their sins and revealed Himself.
He anointed prophets to proclaim the good news and to help the Israelites,
to bring peace and orderliness to their civilization as what God wanted. He also created
a law, the ten commandments in Mt. Sinai to bring back the orderliness of His creation.
By implementing this law, we could see the eagerness of God to let His people know that
He is always there, ready to accept their change of choices. It invites again and again the
Israelites to come back to their faith to Him and to fulfill His will, His purpose of
shalom. He let the Israelites listen to gospels to know and learn about God, about what
God want to tell them and His purpose of shalom. God commissioned all the prophets to
spread to all His people that the gospel is the source of all saving truth and moral
teaching and to impart to them the heavenly gift. And after they learn through the holy
spirit the commission has been fulfilled and those apostles under the inspiration of the
holy spirit has committed the message for the salvation to writing. Then the writers of
the scriptures make acknowledgement of the author (God) for the teaching of solitude
and faithful through their write of the scripture that to be given to the people and
believer of God.
God speak to the human through the letters write by the sacred writers
that the God choices to say to man what to do and to guide His people to the right path,
like the shepherd guiding the sheep to the beautiful grassland to feed, to grow and to
mature itself. God show the Israelites the way to have faith in him by speaking into the
writing of the scriptures and bring the holy spirit into them and bring the salvation to
them. This love of God to the people that have faith in him he gave a way to learn what is
the Son salvation for our sins and the thoughtfulness about His concern in our weak
human nature by that he gave us his word and eternal wisdom for us to be forgiven for
our wrongdoings and to right it for us and for the holy spirit that protect us from evil.
As a bigger picture of the narrative of the old testament, before we become
what we are now it was planned by God. As what I discovered or unfold to this
discussion God give us a unique gift, for being created in the image and likeness of God
and the privilege to choose what we wanted, for us to be grateful to Him. Being grateful
to him is the only thing He wanted, because being grateful means having faith on Him
and do whatever He commands us to do. We human, the creation of God must be
grateful because among His creation we were the only creation with a great intelligence
and with the image and likeness of God that can rule above other creations.
 This discussion of the invitation of faith in God is such a great argument
about what we need to do, what we can learn from this discussion and insights does it
conveys to us, as a creature of God. It let me realize that God don’t just make such a
beautiful place, but He wants us to know good thing of being created. Responsibilities
may come in our life, but it depends on our choices, we were given a freedom to choose
to know what is wrong from right and what is bad from good. This discussion gives me
opportunity to explore more, discover and uncover what His plan was for His creations
and what great responsibility He gives us as His helper and companion and most
especially His creation that bears His image and likeness. Furthermore, Old testament
help us to know why people in the new testament practice this kind of thing, what are
their basis in implementing those rules that they make. Faith as the main point of
religious discussion may be hard to discuss, to argue, but when you know where it came
from, the history behind those stories it will be easy to discuss to someone who has less
faith in God.

Sources:

R. Haight, Dynamics of Theology, “Faith as a Dimension of the Human” (NY: Orbis, 2001), 15-
31.
B. Birch, What Does the Lord Require? The Old Testament Call to Social Witness. “In
the Image of God.” (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985)
SHALOM