paraphrasing St. Augustine on the Trinity

Do you believe that love, friendship, and community are at the very essence of reality?

Only if you believe in the triune God can you believe that.

Why?

If God is a single uni-personal God, you would then need to ask this question: when did this God first begin to love? When did this God first enter into relationships, friendships, and communication? It would not have been until this God would have created the first being, the first angel, the first human, the first whatever. And therefore love would not be at the very essence of this God because it came later, it would have been peripheral. And so then love could not be at the very essence of this reality.

If you believe in many gods, then you believe that ultimate reality is basically a power struggle.

Only if you believe in a Creator who is the triune God, a God who is a community of beings that love and serve one another, that enjoy one another and defer to each other... only when you believe in this God can you believe that love, harmony, unity, diversity, friendship, and communication are at the very essence of reality.

Otherwise you have to believe that the very essence of reality is a power play or something impersonal with love coming in later.

- I think this is a very interesting take on the trinity. A sort of philosophical, logical apologetic that rallies the 'faithful', but can easily leave those outside of the 'Christianese' speaking, 'inner circle', uneasy and confused with its mystical, esoteric nature. So here is the reason why its so important to us all:

How can you know a God like this individualistically?

When the very essence of God is community, the only way you can possibly know a God like that is THROUGH community.

or to put it another way

If you were to really get to know a God like that it would inevitably draw you into deep oneness and community with other people.

a Pause in the Poetry and Rhythm of God's Creation - His image and Community

In the beginning God created.

God said, and it was. Evening and Morning - the first day.
God said, and it was. Evening and Morning - the next day.
God said, and it was. Evening and Morning - the next day......

This rhythm is interrupted in Genesis 1:26 -
Let us make man in our own image.

You are meant to reflect, as disruption in any good piece of poetry would make you do.

God is now engaging in a conversation, with His triune self:

Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

and then the thesis:

Genesis 1:27 - So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Man and woman TOGETHER, in community, is what bears the image of God. Not a single individual.

In Chapter 2 we see the rhythm of "good" creation being established until:

Genesis 2:18 - It is not good for man to be alone.

The one thing in a good creation that was not good was Adam's solitude. Why? Adam could not bare the divine image of God on His own, as an individual.

Being in community is where we experience what it means to be truly human. Our very nature cries out for it because are very purpose is to bare the image of God.

We are made in the image of our Creator, in an image of our God whose very character is community.

-- for those who are interested in Gospel Community I would HIGHLY recommend Total Church By, Steve Timmis and Tim Chester