Berry Pie

While in high school I saw a video of Christian comedian Mike Warnke. Many things that he said still remain in my mind.

He helped me understand the triune nature of God. He explained the Trinity by comparing it to berry pie.
He said that a good berry pie has runny filling. If you were to cut a berry pie into three pieces there would be three clearly delineated pieces, but their content would remain undivided. Thus the Trinity—three in one. Three clear individuals, but one undivided whole. Make sense? It works for me!
I’ve bumped into Adventists who’ve attacked the integrity of the Trinity doctrine. Perhaps you’ve heard murmurings of the same. One said, “You can’t pray to Jesus, you pray through Jesus.” In other words he was saying, Jesus isn’t equal with the Father, he’s the Son, so don’t talk to Him. I was told, “If you pray to Jesus, your prayers are unheard and unanswered.”
Most of the religious leaders in Jerusalem had these same ideas about Jesus. “Kill him!” they screamed as they picked up stones to hurl at him, “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).
Jesus had a berry pie theology. He said, “I and the Father are one . . . the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:30, 38). Jesus was on earth and the Father was in heaven, but that was only a line in the piecrust.
And Jesus spent hours upon hours—all night sometimes—talking to His Father because He so valued that divine interconnectedness. It’s no wonder that when the Father removed His presence from the Son on the cross, it caused Jesus to cry out in anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Jesus had never, in all of previous eternity, been alone.
This also sheds light on Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane before His death: “Take this cup from me” (Mark 14:36). Jesus did not want to bail out on dying for us. He just wanted His Father to stay with Him during the whole ordeal. The thought of losing touch was more painful than anything He could imagine. And He died of a broken heart.
I’ve also heard people discounting the value of the Holy Sprit to the Trinity. Even going so far as to say that the Holy Spirit is just a figment, a breath, a bag of fairy floss in the circus of divinity.
Not so, according to Jesus. He said there was no greater sin than to speak against the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 12:30-32). The Pharisees had accused Jesus of receiving His power from the sprit of the devil and it was Jesus’ turn to shout, “Blasphemy!” Pick on Me all you want, Jesus said, but be careful how you treat the Holy Spirit or you might never be forgiven!
Want some firepower in your discussions about the Holy Spirit? Try these: The Holy Spirit placed Jesus in Mary’s womb (Matthew 1:18). The Holy Spirit took a bodily form at Jesus’ baptism (Luke 3:22). The Holy Sprit took the form of wind and then tongues of fire before blessing the disciples with the gift of tongues (Acts 2:1-4).
The Trinity is not an easy thing to explain. Things of God are often like that! But berry pie I understand. And every time I have a piece I am challenged again to face the reality that God is bigger than my mind can fathom, and His ways are beyond mine. One day, when we meet Him in all His glory, we will understand. But until then, pass the pie.

Bible quotations are from the NIV.