Deep truth transience the human ability systemize knowledge. God’s Spirit cannot be can’t be fully captured by human constructed theological assertions and orthodox creeds. I appreciate why people want to be sure their faith to rooted in the truth. Orthodox creeds provide comfort and a sense of safety, but here lays the danger. A focus on orthodoxy (the “tenants”) will often pull us away from what’s most important: the Spirit working in our hearts, the person of Jesus, and His emphasis on loving God and our neighbors. A wise person once told me that if you are always comfortable with your theology and what you read in the Bible, you are self deceived. We are so unlike God… if we don’t feel struggle and tension, we are missing something, we have formed God in our image.
In Unity, Freedom, Charity I noted that Christians should unify around what is essential and not use differences in the non essentials to separate ourselves from others. In that post I suggested that an essential Christian theology could be defined by something as simple of the Apostles or Nicene Creed but I am now questioning that these creeds, which are minimalist orthodoxy, will be as useful as I hoped.
On a trip to Yosemite, my friend David raised an interesting question:
If you took the beliefs of everyone you know who seems to have a real relationship with Jesus as evidenced by their lives (James 2), what is the intersection of their beliefs?
David went on to suggest that it would be the null set. He doesn’t actually believe that, but was taking an extreme position to force me to think. I said surely there would be something, like the Apostle’s creed. David asked me if everyone I thought had a real relationship with Jesus fully embraced the Apostle’s Creed. I realized that there were several people who didn’t. I was reminded of the phrase “People who are saved in spite of their doctrine rather than due to it”.
What is essential? Before Jesus there were many people of faith who didn’t know truths contained in the Apostle’s creed yet are held up as examples of faith (Hebrews 11). When asked about faith, the answers Jesus gave failed to include key elements of the Apostle’s creed: Luke 23:39-43, John 3, Mark 1:15, Matthew 22:37-40, Matthew 7:21, John 14:15. Likewise later statements of faith: Acts 16:30-31, Romans 10:9 are rather minimalist. It seems to me that there are just three core elements of an authentic faith which are relational in nature:
- Help – I am lost without God
- Thanks – God provided when I turned toward Him
- Yes – I will follow you
When I think about Jesus’ life, I don’t see a focus on theology, I see a focus on responding to God and to loving others. While overly simplistic, the WWJD campaign got something really right by using the word “do” rather than “believe”. I appreciate an observation made by John Mark Comer in the book Practicing the Way:
If a person’s vision of God is distorted… the more religious they become, the worse they become.
Orthodoxy provides guardrails to keep us from going too far off track in our beliefs, but it does nothing to keep our heart and soul centered on God. Our goal should be to know Jesus, and for our lives to be transformed to be more like Him. We need to leave room for the Spirit to work, or we will find ourselves in dead orthodoxy and in the company of orthodox religious leaders who worked against Jesus.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
