What is your faith?

Today a fellow new faculty member unexpectedly pulled me aside and inquired: "If I may ask, what is your faith?" I was surprised at how quickly a formulaic answer slipped from my lips: 1. Raised Catholic, 2. Ordained in the Reformed Church in America, 3. Transferring my ordination to the United Church of Christ, and 4. A follower of Jesus often disappointed in Christianity in its organized institutional forms. As my new colleague recounted his story of converting from Reform Judaism to Christianity via his wife's  Korean Presbyterian Church affiliation, I was struck how my answer said nothing about my faith in any meaningful detail. He, on the other hand, anxiously spoke about his faith in the guilt of humanity, and the necessity of Christ, and his belief that the gospel was in fact "good news" that all humans needed to hear. I couldn't help but feel disappointed that my own articulation of "faith" was nothing more than a laundry list of history, credentials, and suspicion towards hierarchy, or perhaps the shadowy history of the institutional growth of the Christian religion.

So what is my faith? If faith is a certain belief in the unseen, then with my life I believe:

1. God is infinite spirit, not Zeus sitting "above" or "high" on a "heavenly mountain," but that within which both the cosmos and heaven have their being.   

2. God is infinitely beyond human comprehension, yet makes God's Self known to us through media we can digest.

3. God, although beyond us, is personal. I don't know how. Neither do you.

4.  God is love. And I believe that true love, regardless between whom, is always a sacred window through which God can be "seen" or "known."

5. The Love of God is eternal. Love is the motivation out of which all the cosmos was borne in goodness; it is the motivation out of which God improves us when we fail or make wrong choices; and it is the grounding in which  we are reconciled when we face brokenness of heart or relationships -- whether those relationships be with others, God, or the world in which we live.

6. People give up and assign people to hell. God, however, does not give up. Ever. Like the human physician who endures the screaming and kicking of patients ill with disease and disorder, God sees beyond our wrongs and our misgivings and brings us to wholeness.

7. Jesus is the human face of God; the manifestation of God in human form; the Wisdom of God made manifest in a body that could touch ours and ours God's. I believe this because I have experienced Christ mystically, not simply because someone told me it was true.

8. I don't understand all of Jesus's teachings. Neither do you.

9. Jesus's death on the cross was not economic for either the sins of those whom God predestined to be "saved,"  nor for those who choose to believe that Christ's death offers forgiveness of sins. Christ's death on the cross is nothing less than God's breaking heart showing us that the world can literally molest, abuse, torture, and slay God, and God's response is still utterance upon utterance and declaration upon declaration of forgiveness and love. It is  an utterance on me. It is an utterance on you. It is an utterance of forgiveness on the entire cosmos. You can choose to believe you are forgiven, but it is already true. 

10. Jesus could not tolerate (and can not tolerate) hypocrites or self-righteous, logo wearing, list-checking, finger pointing "religious people." But he loved them in his day, and I'm pretty sure he still loves them now. I have a hard time loving them. But the hard truth is, I am "them" too. You might be as well. 

11. Jesus exquisitely and fiercely loves all those people who get fingers pointed at them. Their/our love impresses Jesus. But people on the "inside," or the "greatest among us" also love, and Jesus loves that too. It's not about being on the right or left. But it is about love and love's implications.

12. The presence of God is here. I call that the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit does pretty amazing things. It's too bad we try and make Spirit do magic tricks.

13. Scripture is inspired as a living text. Therefore its holiness and message is far too alive and probing to be reduced to literal words on a page. Fundamentalists short change themselves. So do intellectuals who want it to be mere literature, or who think it can be mastered by critical analysis.

14. I'm pretty sure there are living texts of scripture, which Spirit has inspired that are not currently bound by Bible publishing houses. 

15. Believing that God is in the mix of time and space, my faith tells me that we ought to honor our history and heritage, but not at the expense of discarding the truth of our experiences of God today.

16. Theology is fine, but none of us should be so boxed in that we can draw lines around God's truth. The truth of the Infinite One cannot be contained.

17. God is love. You are loved. I am loved. The love of God is God's justice, even when we go wrong. I'm pretty sure that's the message Christ created out of the absolute horror and shame of the cross. It is the living message we can be, each of us as occasions for love and touch-points of God's Spirit. 

18. Our theology might really suck, but we are loved. We should probably try and act like that more often.