Written by: Christian Swails on January 23, 2025

Things are getting better. Life is progressing towards a state of goodness. Forgotten people, abandoned places, and broken systems are being shot through with renewal. Restoration is bursting forth and breaking through the ground. Humanity is good. The Divine is in everyone and everything, more and more inhabiting reality. There is an abundance that wants to be everywhere. The universe and our world are being happened to by Love. The most responsible thing I can do in my lifetime is to fall into the flow of that Love and allow it to direct my thoughts and actions. And after this lifetime I’ll keep doing the things I love and am good at, except better. I’ll visit the places I didn’t get to see and build innovative creations I can only dream of now. There is no rush and no loss because there is no end. All shall be well, and all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well. I believe this. This is my world view and it pops me out of bed in the morning. This is my formula:

Humanity is God-imaged

The world is sacred

God is Love

Christ is coming (constantly)

Choose awareness or striving

Be with God now

I used to believe that things were getting worse. I used to try to convince other people that things were getting worse and that they were running out of time to make a cognitive decision about their post-mortem existence. I was pretending to change my behavior. I was shoving my trauma deeper into exile. I was trying to be motivated by guilt, shame, and scarcity. And I was trying to motivate others in the same way. I was not good at any of this. Because deep down, something in me just didn’t believe it. This was my formula: 

Humanity sucks

The world is evil

God is pissed at a distance

We are leaving

Choose Heaven or Hell

Be with God one day..

Threshold Concepts

A threshold concept can be thought of as a key that opens a doorway to a complete shift in the understanding of any subject: mathematics, psychology, physics, philosophy, humanities, or spirituality – “in any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal.”

Let’s look at some examples:

Science

• The Conservation of Energy: Understanding that energy changes forms but never disappears.

Physics

• Symmetry in Nature: Fundamental symmetries (e.g., in charge, time, and parity) govern the laws of physics and reveal deeper truths about the universe.

Literature

• The Hero’s Journey: Learning Joseph Campbell’s framework for universal storytelling.

Philosophy

• The Allegory of the Cave (Plato): Understanding that perceived reality may not reflect ultimate truth.

History

• History as narrative – a constructed story, influenced by the storyteller’s perspective, values, and biases.

Economics

• Opportunity Cost: Realizing every choice comes with a trade-off.

Psychology

• Cognitive Dissonance: Understanding the discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs.

Religious Studies

• Imago Dei: The belief that humans are created in the image of God.
• Kenosis: Understanding self-emptying love as a transformative force.

Art

• The Rule of Thirds: Understanding balance and composition in visual art.

Technology

• Moore’s Law: Recognizing the exponential growth of technology.

Education

• Constructivism: Learning is an active, personal process of meaning-making.

That last one on education is important. These concepts can not be taught through a transfer of information, they have to be discovered. An instructor can set the environment for me to discover these concepts but the ideas break conditioned understanding and have to be wrestled with. I may be able to repeat the information I learned, but it does not take me through the portal of enlightenment until I experience it at a discovery level. This is why self-discovery is so important in any form of pedagogy. If it is truly a threshold concept, the shift is irreversible, and the previous understanding of the subject can never be retrofitted.

Many of these concepts are theoretical and have to be experienced through actively trying to prove or disprove the theory. The experiment you set up is less about right or wrong and more about the true understanding that is taking place in the experimentation. In his Tedx Talk on threshold concepts, Robert Coven calls this ‘Modeling’.

Spiritual Modeling

I’ve conducted quite a bit of modeling with my spirituality over the years. I’ve always been a spiritual seeker but in my twenties I deeply needed my beliefs to be experientially true, not just psychological programming in the form of inherited obligations. I started questioning everything and that led me to some really beautiful theological, eschatological, and ontological breakthroughs.

Restoration of All Things

The ultimate goal of creation is the restoration and renewal of all that is broken, culminating in God dwelling with humanity in all the Earth. This vision emphasizes God’s transformative work in partnership with humanity.

Kingdom Theology

The Bible reveals a metanarrative where God invites humanity to co-create and extend Eden into the world. This restorative process transforms creation and people into reflections of divine love, culminating in God fully dwelling with His people.

Epistemology of Love

Love is the fundamental fabric of the universe, and the highest form of knowing arises from choosing love in any moment. Love is the guiding principle for understanding and action.

Dispensationalism

The belief that the world is getting progressively worse and heading toward destruction stems from dispensationalist theology, which rose in popularity after the world wars. Historically, Christian theology emphasized renewal and restoration rather than destruction.

Atonement: Solidarity Through Suffering

In ‘The Universal Christ’, Richard Rohr critiques penal substitutionary atonement and highlights the Solidarity Atonement Theory (from Moral Influence Theory), which views Jesus’ death as an act of divine solidarity with human suffering. It reframes atonement as transformative love rather than a transactional payment for sin.

Spiritual Formation

Finally, these threshold concepts found personal grounding for me through spiritual practices that cultivate a direct, experiential awareness of God’s presence. This awareness transformed these theories into knowing through encountering Love. This present awareness is available in every moment and is the portal to the Kingdom of God now.

Reconstructionists

One final word on threshold concepts. While the other side of the wandering is deeply fulfilling, the time in the liminal desert – when you become aware of the deconstructing knowledge but haven’t yet integrated it – can be painful and confusing. For many, including myself, this can lead to anger, bitterness, and rejection of all previously inherited beliefs regarding the subject. I believe this is what is happening with the hyper move of exvangelicals toward deconstruction. Deconstruction isn’t bad. It’s necessary. Now we need some reconstructionists to point the way forward towards hope.

Bibliography

• “Julian of Norwich.” Paraclete Press. Accessed January 23, 2025. https://paracletepress.com/products/julian-of-norwich.
• “Threshold Concepts in Practice.” Accessed January 20, 2025.
• Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding. 0 ed. Routledge, 2006. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203966273.
• Coven, Robert. Breaking Through: Threshold Concepts as a Key to Understanding. TEDxCaryAcademy, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPYSKSFky4.
• Eldredge, John. All Things New: Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love. Thomas Nelson, 2017.
• Mackey, Tim. Various Works. The Bible Project, n.d..
• Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. HarperOne, 2008.
• Fujimura, Makoto. Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. Yale University Press, 2021.
• Wright, N.T. History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology. SPCK, 2019.
• Scofield, C.I. Scofield Reference Bible. Oxford University Press, 1909.
• Weber, Timothy P. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe. Convergent Books, 2019.
• Varillon, François. Joie de croire, joie de vivre. Les Editions du Cerf, 1978.
• Willard, Dallas. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. HarperOne, 1988.
• Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. WaterBrook, 2019.
• Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. IVP Books, 2004.

About the Author

Christian Swails

Christian is the founder of CoCreation - a Startup Hub for social entrepreneurs in Savannah, Ga. He serves as the Spiritual Director for Wesley Gardens Retreat Center and Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church.

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