The Making of the Gospel Seminar
It is hard to express the pain and triumph I dually experienced as I worked on the Gospel Seminar workbook. When Chul first brought up the suggestion last month of having all the available members to produce a section of the Gospel Seminar workbook, my lazy instinct tugged at me to tell Chul that I was not available and was “busy.” I just wanted to avoid stretching my mind and challenging my intellect in any way. It also scared me quite a bit to think that I would be participating in the creation of material that would be read by prestigious international graduate students who are more educated and intellectually sharper than me. However, I could not just abandon my ISM brothers and sisters and decided to accept this challenge.
As I was part of one of the three teams, I chose to work on the section, “God as Creator.” On top of reviewing Course 101 material and remembering past Bible Studies, I also turned to books by Francis Schaeffer, A.W. Pink, Kenneth Boa, etc. There were many books and writers I would probably have never come across were it not for the Gospel Seminar. With these resources as a jumping board, I soon built an argument about the characteristics of God that one can draw out by observing creation. First, that God is orderly; second, that God is good; and third, that God is sovereign. I added more “meat” to the contents with verses from Genesis, Psalms, and Job that proclaimed God’s creation and God as Creator. I read up on the complexities of DNA, the abundance of creation (there are 840,000 species of insects!), the probabilities that need to be accounted for creating life on earth, and how the Big Bang could prove the existence of God. Sometimes our work nights would go to 3AM. At times it seemed we were at our wits’ end.
However, as I prepared and refined my section, I was hit again and again by the total claim God has over my life as His Creation, and the fact that I can trust His sovereignty because He is a good God that wants to love us. I was also reminded of the mind-boggling factor that God even cares about me, even though I am but a mere speck on this earth compared to the vastness of the universe. As I look back on all that I learned from my section as well as others, I am glad to have taken on this challenge as I deepened my knowledge and faith of God as Creator. Those late nights of peer reviews, editing, and formatting were indeed worthwhile, as I heard from every Gospel Seminar attendees that the Seminar helped them to understand key elements about Christianity better. Praise the Lord!! Indeed, God is the sovereign Creator of the universe, and He has been very faithful and merciful in giving us all this chance to be His ambassadors and recipients of wisdom through the Gospel Seminar!