If our faith was strong, like the
faith of Jesus, if we knew God the Father the way Jesus knew his Father, we would
not get all worked up if someone disagreed with us. Because we are intimately in a relationship with the Creator of all the
universe. Jesus was assured and confident in his God. His faith was
unshakable.
He had a living faith because he
was one with the living Father!
We humans argue violently because
our faith is feeble and we are deathly afraid that if some part of our theology
was disproved, that would mean God is not real.
This is why people immediately
shut off when it is suggested that perhaps the creation story is a beautiful
picture, a true fiction, or that the Bible is a man-made book written by humans
trying to be obedient to this whimsical God singing forth a crazy story! If we
had stronger faith, if we were absolutely certain that God was God and the
Spirit was working, that the Great Story
was what is happening right now in the world and what always has been happening;
and what is more, that our Father is in love with us and we talk with him
daily, then it would not bother us the theories of others. We could accept and
actually love those who think differently than us. We could love them
genuinely…because we know the Father.
‘I
am one with the Father. Say what you want. I know him—the Creator of all
Life—and he knows me. I talk with him and he talks to me. I know that he loves
you and I know that he loves me.’
I am sure that is what Jesus
constantly thought. I am certain that is why Jesus was so at ease with all
types of people. Nothing could upset him…he shared intimacy with the living
God.
If we knew God the way Jesus knew
God (not as a dead statue but as a living Father), then even when those issues
which divide Christians arose, those sights at the top of the mountain which
the Father has yet to reveal, we would not despair…for we know our Father is alive. He hugs us with living eyes and warm
arms.
He is not a dead statue.
But most of the time our faith is
weak because we serve a statue, bowing down to it and calling it God,
unknowingly so. We forget that God is alive, that God is working in the world…and
that he ordered no statue be made of him…because
he is alive.
Our arguments, most of the time, are of those truths God has
not given us…yet.
So apparently, these truths do
not matter for God (yet) in terms of what he is asking us to do right now. Maybe both are right? Maybe
both are wrong? But if God had felt that it was imperative for all of us to
believe one single way, would the infinite God not have made it undeniably
explicit for us?
And if you are unsure of your
answer to that question, then you serve a spiteful God and I want no part of
his story.
If God is good, the God of this
Great Story, then in every moment, whether we understand what he is doing or
not, we must trust that he is only looking to do what is best for his children.
Thus, the things that are not explicit in the Bible, we must trust that they
are not imperative in God’s Great Story. We must trust that our Father allows
and even enjoys variability (like the plants and animals).
But God did make some things
explicit for us.
Jesus did pronounce certain
inarguable mandates which must be obeyed if we truly wish to call God Father: The first and greatest commandment is to
love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind
and with all your strength. And the second is like the first, to love your
neighbor as you love yourself.
Do
this and you will live.
In the Catholic Church, it is believed
that the bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus when
consumed and therefore people are eating and drinking our Savior
when taking the Lord’s Supper. I think that is a beautiful picture and God will
accept this and honor it if done with great reverence and joy; if one eats the
bread and drinks the cup with love for their living Savior whom they trust is filling
them with grace.
And those who take his supper and
think it is purely symbolic, if taken in sincerity and with tear-stained cheeks
full of gratitude for the One who spilled his blood for us, then I think God
will accept that too.
I
think God is so infinitely merciful that so long as the heart of one is seeking
him, striving to thank him and to show mercy to all, to love all, then the form
of one’s religion (denominational beliefs) is accepted by God.
At least, that's what all the prophets in the Old Testament said.
That's what Jesus said...
So long as the core is not
violated, for Jesus is alive, then I
believe God is far more merciful then we imagine we are being faithful.
Jesus laid out the core issue: that you believe that he is the son of God
and that you love God and your neighbor.
And if you are in relationship
with the living God, what does it matter if your brother believes differently
over how to be baptized, what communion represents? You are both right. You are
both wrong.
And you both were not given all
the facts.
God gave enough for faith, and
that is it.
What if God wanted you both to
believe differently on these crust issues in order to shine his light to those
who believe like you in that area? For his love is for all. And his grace is
the core. Oh, the depths of our Father’s grace. To know him there and still to
look upon others, any other, with anger is not to know him at all.
If we truly understand this Great
Story, one of perpetually bleeding grace, one where God is paying the debt for
our rebellion and we are only asked to let him love us and to forgive any and
everyone in return, then we must act like Alyosha in the tale, The Brothers
Karamazov. After spending the first part of his life a stoic monk distant
from the world, in his moment of salvation, finally grasping the redemption and
grace of this story, finally understanding that God his Father is alive (and
not a statue), he responds as only we can, like a child.
“Alyosha stood, gazed, and
suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it.
He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it
all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and
vowed passionately to love it, to love it forever and ever. ‘Water the earth
with the tears of your joy and love those tears,’ echoed in his soul…Oh! In his
rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the
abyss of space, and ‘he was not ashamed of that ecstasy…’
He longed to forgive everyone and
for everything, and to beg forgiveness! Oh, not for himself, but for all men,
for all and for everything!...But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it
were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had
entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of
his mind—and it was for all his life and forever and ever. He had fallen on the
earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion…”[i]
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