“Heaven or Hell, Are Those the Only Choices?” It’s Not About the Here After...It’s About the Here and Now.

Is heaven the goal of the Christian life? No, not really.  The popular understanding of the goal of the Christian life is that once you’ve accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior that’s it, nothing else is required or expected except maybe getting others to do the same.  But this understanding is not right, if you comprehend Jesus and his way you will also understand that the goal of Christianity isn’t to stay out of hell and go to heaven.  The goal of Christianity is to transform lives and the world.

This heaven-and-hell framework has been the way Christianity has been seen, known and understood for a long time now.  Sometime after Constantine called the bishops together and asked them to formula a unifying doctrine for Christianity, a creed that summarized the faith so that everyone knew what it meant to be a Christian and how to know if someone wasn’t Christian, the world has been divided into “us” and “them.” And naturally once you have defined who is acceptable and who isn’t, you can begin to draw up a world view that separates people into two groups and a theology that makes your group the better one.  What this means is that if you are “us” then you get to go to heaven.  But if you are “them” then you go to hell and the only way to keep from ending up in hell is to believe as the “us” group believes.

Add to this a desire by those in power to formula a theology that gave support and credence to the way society was ordered – a theology that said that this life isn’t what matters; it’s the life to come.  In fact, this life will most likely be filled with suffering and pain and this is because of your sin and the sin of your ancestors and of Adam and Eve.  And the best you can hope for is that when you die you will be found faithful and granted entrance into heaven where suffering and pain are no more.  The best way to live faithfully is to believe that Jesus’ death was a payment for your sins, believe the creed, accept your lot in life and place your hope in God’s grace so that you can receive your eternal reward.  And if you want to guarantee a favorable report upon your death you convince someone else of this reality you have accepted so that they can be saved too.  The goal of Christianity as presented in this way is heaven and saving souls.

Jesus didn’t have a lot to say about any of this.  In fact Jesus didn’t seem too worried about heaven and hell and the ultimate destination of one’s eternal soul.  Jesus was far more interested in getting people to recognize that the religious and political authorities were using violence and injustice to try and subjugate the people and keep them from finding the truth that is God’s desire for peace and justice for all people.  Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom but not as a final resting place for a saved soul.  He was talking about a political and spiritual reality that transcended the present reality.  He was trying to tell about God’s justice, God’s economy, God household and how things are to work in God’s creation.  Jesus was about the here and now, bringing justice here and bringing peace now.  We are commanded to love one another not save each other’s souls.  We are commanded to love one another not to believe a certain set of stipulations so that at some final judgment we can be found acceptable.  And in the every few places where Jesus does seem to talk about a final judgment, the measuring stick isn’t a creed or belief system it is what you have done for the least and the lost that counts you among those who are blessed.

The Christian life is one of love and service not of saving souls.  The church has to figure out how to reclaim our original calling.  We have to ask ourselves, how do we become a people on the way instead of a waiting area for the heavenly train?  You see, as I have been saying now for eleven weeks, faithful living isn’t about gaining entrance into heaven.  It’s not about earning a crown or somehow surviving the tests to make it to the sweet reward.  Faithful living is working for peace and justice, it is loving others and struggling to transform the world into the place God dreams it can be.  The goal of faith is a transformed life and world; right here and right now.

The Christianity that professes the goal of faith as being heaven and saving souls is not the Christianity that fits with Jesus’ life, teachings and the early church that grew from his original band of followers.  Time and again the “us” and ‘them” division was trumped by love and acceptance.  Jesus didn’t advocate it, Paul wrote against it, and Peter had visions that told him to forget it.  Being on the way with Jesus isn’t traveling to a place and time in the future we call heaven.  Being on the way with Jesus is living life as Jesus lived it.  It is letting love flavor all you are and do.  It is serving others.  It is working to end oppression and injustice.  It is living God’s commonwealth here and now.  We who claim to believe in Jesus are to be passionate about the here and now and not about some heaven light years away.  The community of faith that claims to follow Jesus on the way is a community that is heavily invested in the here and now and has no time to dwell on heaven and hell and ultimate rewards.  If you follow Jesus you realize that there really isn’t an “us” or a “them.”  We are just “we,” all of us together; the family of God.

I believe in God’s grace.  I know that God wishes only the best for me, you and every single person on this planet.  I believe in God’s love.  I know that whatever comes after I take my last breath, when we take our last breathes, will be something that every person knows.  There isn’t a place called heaven.  There isn’t a place called hell.  There isn’t a final division of humanity into “us” and “them.” 

What there is is a world that needs us.  A world filled with people who are victims of injustice and oppression.  People who have been sold a bill of goods that is so much smoke and mirrors.  A world filled with people who are desperate for a better life, here and now.  People who need other people to love them, assist them, advocate for them and provide opportunities for them that will help them have a better life here and now.  What people don’t need is someone handing them a Bible, telling them to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to keep on believing and earning for themselves a get into heaven free card they can use when they die.  If we are living faithfully they will know God, they will know a living Christ, they will find hope, and they will begin to find their way to God.  If we love and service, work for peace and justice, advocate and provide opportunity heaven will come, God’s commonwealth will be realized.

The goal of faithful living is partnering with God for the transformation of the world.  The goal of Christianity is loving and serving, transforming lives and the world.  Forget about heaven, don’t worry about hell, don’t sweat saving someone’s soul.  Love you neighbor, help the least and the lost, be the best person you can be, love God and everything will be ok.  

“Jesus Lives?” How do you understand the resurrection in the post-modern world?

If the body of Jesus, the body that was killed on the cross, didn't come back to life then what does it mean to say “Jesus lives?”  Jesus lives! We proclaim but how?  Is he a zombie, reanimated corpse, ghost, or what?  How can we make sense of the reality that Jesus lives?  For centuries it has been assumed that to say “Jesus lives” means that he came back to life; that his body that was nailed to the cross and put in the tomb was brought back to life, reanimated in some way.  That the laws of nature and science were suspended or whatever and Jesus was returned to life.  This doesn’t make sense to the thoughtful thinking post-modern person nor does it fit with our understanding of how life and creation work.  So how can we make sense of it?

I have a confession to make.  I don’t believe in the resurrection.  Now that I have your attention let me explain.  I don’t believe that something happened outside the natural laws of our universe.  I cannot suspend these laws and I cannot believe in something that causes me to do that.  What I don’t believe in is the resurrection as a literal, factual event in time and space.  I do believe in the resurrection however.

OK, I hear you screaming at me so let me try and tell you what I think, feel and believe about the resurrection.  I have said before that I don’t know exactly what happened that first Easter but a bunch of people who were fearing for the lives and sure that the Imperial and religious authorities would be dragging them off for the next execution all of a sudden started to speak, heal and serve in Jesus’ name.  They openly professed Jesus as Savior, Lord and Son of God – all titles reserved for the emperor.  I do know that whatever happened to them they had an encounter with the holy that they could only comprehend by speaking of it as an experience of the risen Christ.

If you have ever had such an experience you know what it is like to try and grasp what you've seen, heard, felt and know.  You know that words and images just don’t do enough to give a full and complete testimony to what has arisen.  I am not willing to believe that somehow Jesus’ corpse was reanimated, that his dead body was somehow jump-started so that he returned to living as you and I live.  But I can still believe in the resurrection as a reality.

Now I know some will say that with God all things are possible, even the suspending of natural laws and the reanimation of a dead body.  I just don’t believe that this is the way it works.  I don’t think God created a universe that runs by natural laws only to capriciously suspend them when it works to further God’s agenda.  If this were the case wouldn't it happen more often?  I mean when really bad things are happening, things that obviously go against everything we know of God’s desire for humankind and creation, why it is that God doesn't step in then.  The result would be the same as with the resurrection; people would notice, believers would be empowered, God’s mastery of the universe would be displayed, and the love and grace of God would be made known.  Look to the Biblical story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness to find some insight into how Jesus – an God because we know God by knowing Jesus – feels about the effectiveness of suspending natural laws in order to bring about the transformation of creation.  Spoiler alert: Jesus knows that suspending natural laws will not work to bring about the transformation God seeks in us and in creation.

You see, I believe that God wants partners, men and women who have accepted their adoption into the family God and covenanted with God to work to transform the world using justice and peace, non-violence and love.  Therefore, the gift of free will is critical in this discussion.  Free will does not negate miracle.  I believe in miracles, those events and moments when the expected and normal are transcended and the holy breaks in or breaks out or is noticed.  One example, I don’t belief in faith healing but I do believe faith can heal.  So if we have free will how can we believe that God will step into our lives in such a way as the reanimation of Jesus’ corpse to violate this fundamental gift?  So what are we left with then?  We’re left with mystery.

If you want one thing that unsets and confuses the modern mind it is mystery.  It is all around us and it has been with us since we climbed out of the seas.  Why is it that natural laws don’t seem to rule in the smallest and largest ends of the spectrum of our universe?  Why is it that seemingly random things can add up to something special (e.g. love)?  How can two people watch the same thing and come away from it with very different observations and interpretations?  How is it that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts when it comes to humans working together?  And how is it that Jesus who died is also alive?  Mysteries all and yet they are part of the fabric of our lives.

The resurrection of Jesus is a mystery.  It is not meant to be explained in scientific terms.  It isn’t to be seen as a magical divine intervention that suspends the natural order.  It’s not some test of faith where to be a true believer you have to just have faith that it is true.  The resurrection is true because I know it is in my heart and soul.  It is true because I have experienced the in-breaking of the holy in my life like a candle in the pitch black darkness, a campfire’s warmth on a cool beach night.  It’s true because those I love, respect, learn from and who are people of authenticity have shared how it is true for them.  The resurrection is a mystery that is not meant to be explained.  It is a mystery that just is and we are to learn to live with these mysteries.  When we can, life takes on a much deeper, broader and more spiritual tone and Christ lives.

The church is the embodiment of Jesus and in a mystical and spiritual way Jesus is alive in we who claim to live for him.  We are the candle, the campfire.  You, I, we are the body of Christ – Jesus lives because we bring his essence to life in our lives.  People will know the risen Christ by knowing us, the people who have known him.  Jesus lives whenever love is shares.  Jesus Lives whenever justice is done.  Jesus lives whenever the poor and powerless are cared for.  Jesus lives whenever people of faith proclaim him alive in their lives and service.  Jesus lives when we are the light that dispels the darkness of the world.  Jesus lives!  When you love and work for Justice Jesus lives!  When this happens we can loudly and honestly proclaim with deep sincerity “CHRIST IS RISEN!”

“Jesus Died for My Sins?”

Did God have to kill Jesus for us to be made acceptable?   By Jesus’ blood we are set free?  Jesus paid my debt?  Jesus the Lamb of God who bears all the sins of the world?  By his stripes we are healed?  It seems hard to fathom that the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross had to happen to make you and me acceptable to God.  But this is how the death of Jesus on the cross has been sold to us, as a penal substitutionary atonement required by God to make we sinful humans acceptable to receive God’s grace and love.

This theology of the cross goes like this:
 God cannot forgive sin (especially original sin al la Adam and Eve) without inflicting punishment and shedding blood.
 God therefore must punish all sinners (and we all are sinners because of original sin).
 Our sin is against an infinitely holy God so our punishment must be absolute, irrevocable, and eternal.  Therefore all human beings are damned to eternal conscious torment in hell.
 The only way to avoid this punishment is for God to provide a worthy substitute for humanity’s sin, a substitute that can bear God’s infinite wrath.
 Therefore God provided Jesus who was tortured and killed on the cross so God could vent God’s infinite wrath upon a single divine-human representative or substitute rather than on us all.
 Salvation from eternal conscious torment in hell can be ours only if we believe in Jesus and his death for our sake on the cross.
But there is another way, a way as ancient as the first Good Friday and Easter, to understand Jesus’ death and the cross.

Let me be clear and state my position right up front, God didn’t need Jesus to die.  We didn’t need Jesus to die to make us acceptable to God.  God is forgiving and loving and full of grace and mercy.  I know this because I know Jesus as a definitive revelation of God showing God’s character and values.  And what I know of Jesus and therefore of God is that God abhors violence, injustice and oppression.  I know that God is not seeking payment for some “original sin”.  God doesn’t need someone to bear the sins of humanity so that we can enter into a relationship with God.  Jesus died because of human evil and not as a requirement of a bloodthirsty God.  He sacrificed himself as an act of unconditional love to show us how to love.

Why did Jesus die on the cross?  Jesus died on the cross because of human evil and the fears of an Empire and a complacent religious institution.  Jesus came talking about peace and justice without resorting to violence, manipulation or fear.  Jesus shared God’s vision of human society that works by acceptance, justice and peace.  Jesus spoke of the Law as a living thing that needed to be followed but not worshipped, needed to be practiced but within limits and common sense.  And Jesus shared his passion, God’s passion for the outcast and other in society that they might have the same peace and justice we have.

Jesus was a political and religious subversive, revolutionary, world-shattering, radical voice calling people to forget the Empire and the corrupt religious institution and instead return to God and God’s ways of justice and peace for all.  So Jesus was killed to try and silence him and to strike fear into the hearts of his followers in order to quell this subversive movement and especially to keep Rome from destroying Israel.  Jesus allowed himself to be taken and killed because he wanted to show us what it means to live out God’s grace and love; to show us what our world is now but what God wants our world to be.  Jesus as the penal substitutionary atonement sacrifice for humankind isn’t how the cross is to be understood.  It is to be seen as a way to help us know what it means to love.

Marcus Borg talks about this in his book Speaking Christian (New York: HarperOne, 2011).  He says that Jesus’ death intervenes in human history to have a curative impact on out hostility and violence, to turn us towards ways of peace.  This means that because we are hostile and violent, Christ died.  God didn’t torture and kill Jesus, we did.  And this reveals something essential about both God and us.  Can you accept that God loves you as you are and that Jesus’ death was not to make you acceptable but instead to help you understand what it means to love?

People are convinced that Jesus died because he had to so that we could be made acceptable to God.  The only way to help folks get a corrected understanding of Jesus’ death is for us to love as Jesus did, unconditionally.  Unconditionally love is the message of the cross.  Jesus was murdered by the political and religious institutions of his day.  His death was a witness to the power of love and a way of showing us all the way of love, unconditional love.  We must love unconditionally in order for Jesus’ death to make sense.  God didn’t need Jesus to die.  We didn’t need Jesus to die to make us acceptable to God.  Jesus died because the political and religious institutions of his day were threatened by his message of justice, peace and love.  He sacrificed himself as an act of unconditional love to show us how to love one another.

As The Beatles sang, “All you need is love, love.  Love is all you need.”

“Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain.”
Being Christian Means You Practice What you Preach.

“You Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites!”  How many times have you heard this either slung at you personally or in some form or another handed out as a criticism of the Christian faith?  For me it happens all the time when someone finds out I am a member of the Christian Clergy.

 Hypocrisy is defined as the act of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have.  A hypocrite is a person who pretends to be good, pious or sympathetic without really being so.  In this context it is someone who fails to live by the standards of the Christian faith that they profess – it is failing to practice what you preach; it is pretending that your faith informs your actions when your actions say otherwise.

As a parent I have come to know the hard truth that your children do not listen very well to what you say but they pay very close attention to what you do.  There’s a Kraft Mac & Cheese commercial that has the dad chiding his son for stealing his sister’s macaroni and cheese and when the dad pushes him about how he learned to do such a heinous thing the son shoots back “From watching you!”  Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.”

I can understand how people might have this view of Christians being hypocrites: when a famous televangelist is found to be stealing funds, or having an affair, or frequenting prostitutes people see hypocrisy.  When Christians hold up signs at the funerals of soldiers that say “God hates the USA,” “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “God hates gays,” and still talk about the love of God saving you people see hypocrisy.  When a famous Christian leader says that natural disasters which kill hundreds and devastate whole regions are the wrath of God they hear hypocrisy.  When priests sexually abuse children and the church covers it up all the while talking about justice for the powerless they see hypocrisy.  But if you think Christians are hypocritical, that they don’t practice what they preach you might be surprised.  Because for every one of those I just mentioned there are a hundred who try to live authentic lives that honestly reflect their belief in the power of love and justice for all.

The main problem we have as faithful people is that we are shooting for perfection and we always seem to fall short.  It’s like throwing darts or archery or bowling.  Most of us cannot hit the center of the target with every throw or shot or get a strike with every roll.  If we are truly on our game we can do very well but still there will be times we miss the mark.  This is also true with living out our faith and its values and beliefs, we try to practice what we preach in all facets and circumstances of our lives but sometimes we fall short.  It can look like hypocrisy and is if we try to hide our shortcoming, disavow our failure, ignore the miss, or pretend that we hit the mark even though we didn’t.

Today, all around us people are looking for something authentic and real to believe in.  They are looking for authentic and real people they can trust who by their words and actions show that they are trying to live out God’s grace and love and who will honestly admit that they fall short.  People you know; your family and friends, co-workers and classmates, neighbors and acquaintances who know you are a Christian are watching you to see how well you do at hitting the mark and at how well you handle it when you miss.  We who are faithful people must realize that all we do and involve ourselves with must be authentic expressions of our faith, of our belief in a loving God who seeks acceptance, justice and peace for all.

People are searching for authentic and intentional places to belong where they experience others as genuine people who care and who want to put their love and acceptance into practice.  I firmly believe that the Christian faith as I am preaching it and as we are trying to live it is what many people seek.  We need to be willing to live our faith openly and honestly – being authentic and intentional in our life and choices.  St. Francis advised, “Preach the gospel at all times and when needed use words.”

What I am saying about Christianity could also be said about most other religions.  Most faiths profess values and beliefs that are divinely inspired that are compassionate, merciful, just, and loving.  Most adherents to these faiths are trying to hit the mark of their beliefs in their lives and they too are sometimes missing the target.   But what the world needs, what we all need are people of faith living authentic lives that honestly reflect their belief in the power of love and justice for all.  When we practice what we preach, when our actions match our words, when we let the persona of perfection fall away to reveal authentic, flawed, imperfect people striving for perfection in love and service others will see and hear and come to know God.

Christianity is not a faith of hypocrites, it is a faith of imperfect human beings who know they are imperfect but still want to try and live as perfectly as they can the love, acceptance, grace, mercy, compassion and justice of God so that their lives, the lives of others and the world can be transformed into all God dreams it can be.  The prophet Micah tells us what God desires of us, what it means to live faithfully and to be faithful:  “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?“ (Micah 6:8 NRSV)

“Is Jesus the only way to know God?” A look at how Christianity doesn’t have to be the exclusive path to God.

I remember when I first became aware of the fact that people had different ways of worshiping.  It was the first time I went with some friends to a service at the Nazarene Church.  I was maybe 8.  What I noticed were the unmistakable variations in prayers, hymns and preaching.  I came home and asked my mom about it and she said that just because someone is Christian it doesn’t mean they worship in the same way.

It was when I was in college that I got exposed to other faiths and their worship.  It was during my “Christianity is a bad religion I have to find something better” phase that I went to a Moony retreat, Krishna dinner, Buddhist prayer group, Native American experiences, etc.  I didn’t find anything better than Christianity so I returned to the United Methodist Church but I did notice that these others were sincere, faithful and had genuine experiences of the Holy.  I saw the Spirit among these diverse groups and ways of worship.  I came face to face with the reality that the exclusive claims of Christianity didn’t mesh with these very real world encounters with other faiths and their adherents.

I began to adopt what Brian McLaren calls a “benign – sentimental Christian identity”.  I worked hard to keep my faith from offending others by watering it down or apologizing for it or trying to explain its brutal treatment of others as a phase that we were outgrowing.  When that became hard to manage because many Christians were becoming even more hostile to those of other denominations and faiths I began to try and say that my Christianity, while still very similar to theirs, was more in tune with Jesus.  My goal was to try and lessen the exclusiveness and hostility of Christianity by changing words, dropping words, ignoring whole sections of the Bible and allowing for “good” people regardless of their faith or no faith a pass to get into heaven.  September 11, 2001 changed all that.

It wasn’t that one day or the events of it but it was the moment in time when I finally had had enough and owned what I had long been suppressing, all faiths have problems and all faiths have worthy elements and there isn’t one way to know experience and be with God.  I realized what Gandhi meant when he said, “I like your Christ, I don’t like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  I also realized that you could substitute any religion in that quote and I would bet Gandhi would agree.  So this brought me to a very real crisis of faith.  If I asked myself, “Is Jesus is the only way to know God?” I would give myself the answer, “No, many paths lead to God.”

I was feeling that I had to stop being a member of the Christian Clergy.  How could I be a pastor and not believe in what I thought was the fundamental belief of Christianity – Jesus is the only way to know God?  I do not have the time to share with you the journey I undertook to get to where I am today.  Suffice it to say that a lot of reading, soul searching, Bible study, prayer, conferencing with others, contemplation, reflection, and reasoning brought me to a place where I can say without hesitation or qualification that I am a Christian who believes in “Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life” and that Christianity is only one of many paths to God.  I firmly believe that your path to God may not be the path of others.  I have come to the place where I feel you must be confident in your path while allowing others their paths and that this requires you to have strength and a strong faith and deep trust in whatever you perceive God to be.

J.B. Phillips wrote a book Your God Is Too Small that you can find on the internet and download free.  In the introduction he writes:
The trouble with many people today is that they have not found a God big enough for modern needs. While their experience of life has grown in a score of directions, and their mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and by scientific discoveries, their ideas of God have remained largely static.

It is obviously impossible for an adult to worship the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age, unless he is prepared to deny his own experience of life. If, by a great effort of will, he does do this he will always be secretly afraid lest some new truth may expose the juvenility of his faith. And it will always be by such an effort that he either worships or serves a God who is really too small to command his adult loyalty and cooperation.

It often appears to those outside the Churches that this is precisely the attitude of Christian people. If they are not strenuously defending an outgrown conception of God, then they are cherishing a hothouse God who could only exist between the pages of the Bible or inside the four walls of a Church. Therefore to join in with the worship of a Church would be to become a party to a piece of mass-hypocrisy and to buy a sense of security at the price of the sense of truth, and many men of goodwill will not consent to such a transaction.

It cannot be denied that there is a little truth in this criticism. There are undoubtedly professing Christians with childish conceptions of God which could not stand up to the winds of real life for five minutes. But Christians are by no means always unintelligent, naive, or immature. Many of them hold a faith in God that has been both purged and developed by the strains and perplexities of modern times, as well as by a small but by no means negligible direct experience of God Himself. They have seen enough to know that God is immeasurably “bigger” than our forefathers imagined, and modern scientific discovery only confirms their belief that man has only just begun to comprehend the incredibly complex Being who is behind what we call “life.”

Many men and women today are living, often with inner dissatisfaction, without any faith in God at all. This is not because they are particularly wicked or selfish or, as the old-fashioned would say, “godless,” but because they have not found with their adult minds a God big enough to “account for” life, big enough to “fit in with” the new scientific age, big enough to command their highest admiration and respect, and consequently their willing co-operation.
When you require someone to say that Jesus is the only way to know God you are perpetuating the type of Christian belief that J.B. Phillips is describing here.

I believe that Jesus is a definitive revelation of God, showing us God’s true character of love and grace, acceptance and compassion.  I believe that by living life as Jesus calls us to and as he demonstrated we will be what God wants and needs us to be.  Faithful living is working for justice for all people, it is loving others – all others, it is practicing and living peace, but it doesn’t rest on your religious affiliation.  People of faith have to find a way to live and work together.  We cannot let the radical and conservative elements dictate how we live and work together.  Are you able to see the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, Buddhist, humanist, etc as faithful people on a legitimate path to God and salvation?  Can you move beyond the hostile world view that has been a part of Christianity – the “us” and “them” mentality?  Only when you can, when we can, will the world have a chance to be transformed into the universe God envisions.  We must find ways to work with other faithful people so that transformation of ourselves and the world can happen.

Being faithful isn’t about whom you believe in or believing the correct things.  Faithful living is living faithfully God’s call to love and serve and bring justice and peace.  When people love, serve, and work for peace and justice God is there.  The faith tradition is not critical, our religious affiliation isn’t important.  If the intent of our hearts and souls and minds are guided by a sense of the compassion, the love and the grace of God that is enough.

Christians Have to Believe the Strangest Things A New Way to Understand Our Creeds

When I’ve talked with youth and adults about joining the church they often say something like: “To be Christian do you have to believe in virgin birth, hell and all kinds of strange things?”  And my answer is, “No you don’t!”  I answer this way for two reasons.  The first is from my United Methodist roots and the theology of our founder John Wesley who I paraphrase as saying: “In essentials unity, in all else charity.” Essentials for him were three: belief in God the creator, belief in Christ the redeemer and belief in the Holy Spirit who assists us in our efforts to live faithfully.  All else would incorporate all the various beliefs, dogmas and creeds of Christendom.

The second reason I can say you don’t have to believe in all kinds of strange things is that you don’t.  Jesus never laid out a creed, said you had to accept certain theological statement about him, God and creation.  Jesus didn’t have an orthodoxy that he used as a template to assess someone’s correctness of faith or belief.  In all the places where Jesus speaks of faith he is talking about the faith the person has in him, not as a belief system but as a definitive revelation of God’s character, God’s will and God’s way.  So you really don’t have to believe in the Virgin Birth, that Jesus descended into hell, that the Holy Spirit preceded from the Father and the Son, or in a resurrection of the body.

To understand the creeds of the church (The Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, etc) you need to understand that the creeds are word pictures – like poems, myths, stories and songs – developed to try and help us understand or to describe something that is beyond our ability to understand or describe fully.  Creeds, like songs or poems, are trying to describe things using metaphors and images, trying to explain something that is beyond simple understanding.  They are trying to put into words things that words aren’t totally adequate for.

Over the centuries many wars, schism, excommunications, torture and executions have been brought on by the use of creeds.  Old divisions and difference don’t have much meaning in the world today.  Creeds defined who we were as Christians in a world that needed these definitions.  We now live in a world where knowing what someone thinks and feels and believes personally is more important than what institutions say you are.  The old questions answered by creeds just aren’t vital questions for most of us today.  In the past creeds were the “test” of faith.  You needed to profess your allegiance to a set of doctrines that were approved by the institution for the reason of separating “true believers” from everyone else.  They were the ways we defined ourselves in relation to others.  And they are the products of ancient times expressed in words that are historically conditioned and historically relative to the times, languages and issues when they were produced.

After saying all this I must also say that the creeds are still important.  Marcus Borg expresses the reason why very well  in Speaking Christian:
“…saying the creed is identifying with the community that says these words together.  The identification transcends space and time.  It is global.  Christians all around the world, in a multitude of languages, are joined together by these words.  The identification transcends time as well; present and past are joined.  When we say the creed, we identify with Christians who have said or heard these words for over fifteen hundred years.  It is a momentary participation in the communion of saints, living and dead…” (Pages 210-12)

So the question for faithful children of God isn’t, “What must someone believe to be acceptable or one of us?”  Now the question is, “What does it mean to be a person of faith?”  How do we faithful answer today’s questions about faith and belief?  Knowing what you believe and why and being able and willing to share this with others in honest and open ways is a start.  We must do more.  We must provide an authentic, safe place where people can ask questions, explore what they believe, deepen their relationships with God and others.   We must provide opportunities for doubts to be aired without judgment or resentment.  We have to make sure that we listen to other faiths, to agnostics and atheists to glean from them what makes sense and what they can tell us about God and the Spirit and the critique and criticisms they have of our faith and how it is lived and expressed in order to enhance our own understanding of what it is we believe.  And we must constantly assess and reassess our beliefs to make sure what we are professing is what we believe and what shapes and helps transform us.

In our world today, people don’t need a list of does and don’ts.  They need faithful people living faithfully helping them find a way to have a better life and make the world a better place.  Faithfulness, being a true believer, is not believing a set of statements it’s living as partners of God.  It’s not so much about what you believe; more importantly it’s about what you do.  Christians, and people of all faiths, believe many things but the only real requirements we have a partners of God are loving God and others.

God Doesn’t Hate Gays or Anyone Else!

If you where in worship on August 18^th you heard me say without hesitation or qualification that God doesn’t punish or destroy.  I said:

This story [Noah and the rainbow] of God’s grace and love winning over God’s bent to punish and destroy is the foundation of the Gospel.  It is a critical step in the story of salvation that runs through Jesus and beyond.  What God called good in creation, now God promises to maintain and not destroy and in Jesus what God has promised not to destroy is shown the power of love and the means of grace.  God is all about grace and love.  It’s not that we aren’t loved or accepted or that God is so angry at us for what we have done.  God doesn’t care about all that.  All God cares about is that we sincerely desire to transform ourselves and that we want to help God transform the world.  God loves us as we are; period!  Grace really is true!  God is love!

So it should come as no surprise that I don’t think God hates gays or lesbians or bi-sexual or transgendered people.  If God loves everyone as they are no matter sexual orientation, skin color, economic status or religious affiliation then so should I and so should the Church. 

Christianity has been of two minds at the beginning of change on almost every issue of equal rights and social justice through the centuries.   Often times Christianity has had to go through tremendous upheaval and hostility, even war before it has found its way into the world that God envisions.  You see Christianity hasn’t dealt well with change.  We haven’t liked getting over or moving beyond our basic human instinct of “us” and “them” as a needed world view in order for me to feel safe and empowered.  Christianity is always slow to broaden our definition of who is acceptable and why.  You can trace this hesitancy from the early Christian community’s division over the need for circumcision to issues of women’s rights to slavery and up to the inclusion of LBGT folks in the life of the church.  Always there have been voices on both sides and many in the middle seeking to claim that they have God/the Bible/Christian tradition/ the natural order on their side.  Always after much debate, hand wringing, schisms, torment and soul searching the majority of Christians get it figured out and justice prevails.  It happened with circumcision, with slavery, with women’s rights, with race and it is happening with the inclusion of LBGT’s.

There is song out right now that is powerfully related to what I am saying here.  “Same Love” carries the point as Brain Macklemore raps:

Gay is synonymous with the lesser

It's the same hate that's caused wars from religion

Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment

The same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins

It's human rights for everybody, there is no difference!

Live on and be yourself

When I was at church they taught me something else

If you preach hate at the service

those words aren't anointed

That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned

When everyone else is more comfortable

remaining voiceless

Rather than fighting for humans

that have had their rights stolen

I might not be the same, but that's not important

No freedom till we're equal, damn right I support it

I am not trying to say that Christianity hasn’t done great harm in its slow and terrible path to change.  I’m not implying that all Christians have come to the same place concerning these and other issues.  I am not trying to imply that the work on any of these issues is completed.  I just want to make it clear that Christianity does find its way into the place God calls us, the place of acceptance and love; the place of justice and reconciliation; the place of transformation of ourselves and our world.

And for those that want to throw the Bible at this issue I have to remind you of what I said about the Bible on August 11^th:

The Bible is the story of God’s encounter with a people, of God’s interaction with a people, of God’s revelation of self to the world, of God seeking to know human existence, and of the clash of human and divine wills...It isn’t the complete story…  We know that the Bible can help us, inspire us, and reveal God to us but it isn’t infallible or inerrant and it doesn’t have all the answers…

Humans are hopefully evolving, changing, learning and growing.  Our understandings of people and cultures, of races and religions, of what is healthy and normal, of what is true and acceptable are all hopefully evolving and changing too.  God has a dream for this universe and for humanity’s role in it.  I believe that we don’t fully comprehend that role yet.  That over the millennia as humans have evolved from hunter/gatherers to early farmers to urban dwellers, from superstitious fearers of the workings of nature to inquisitive explores of the universe, from empiral governments that rule by fear and violence to democracies run by and for the people; as we have evolved in all aspects of our ways of living and understanding this universe we have moved slowly into the world God wishes for us.  As partners of God we have freedom of choice and because we can choose freely change can take a lot of time and effort.  But change does happen and we can learn to love and include others fully and completely as they are without placing restrictions or obligations upon them.

In the past the church often had to be the leader, helping society find its way but now Christianity finds itself behind.  Society is moving ahead with the full acceptance of LGBT folks.  What stands in the way of achieving full acceptance in our culture is Christianity but not all Christians.  We who have heard God’s voice and understand that all people are loved by God – that all people are God’s people, LGBTs included – we must witness to our faith and our God by working to ensure the full inclusion of LGBT folk in society and in the church. God doesn’t hate anyone.  All are accepted and loved by God.  Faithful Christians need to find ways to combat the social perception that we hate gays because we do not and God doesn’t either.