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.
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