“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.”
Sunday, September 29, 2013
“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)
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)
Monday, September 16, 2013
“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.
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.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
God Doesn’t Hate Gays or Anyone Else!
If you where in worship on August 18th 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 11th:
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.
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