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August 06, 2006

Faith : My Christianity

While I haven't been writing much on this blog for the last few months, that doesn't mean I haven't been writing anything. In that time I composed a few essays that I sent out on my church mailing list. Which leads to the question – why not just post them here as well? To remain true to my goal that this blog should reflect what I am thinking about, I suppose I should (and perhaps I will, eventually); but these recent essays always felt more like private "family" conversations – reflecting what I see that God is doing within my own congregation - than something to share with everyone. There have been some duplicate posts over the last year – essays I posted here as well as to the mailing list; but there have also always been ones I chose not to share because I felt they were meant for a specific time and audience. My most recent writings always seem to have belonged to the later category because of what God has been doing in our little gathering in Fremont.

Thinking on that got me to look back at which I have chosen to post here; and in hindsight I see somewhat of a common theme. There is a point which I think I have felt compelled to make on this blog – that while I declare myself to be a Christian, my faith is not what many Americans would think of when they hear that word.

My faith is not a matter of institutions, buildings, meetings, and leaders. It is about a community of people who know God and support each other in knowing Him better.

My faith is not loud, calling attention to itself. It is a matter of quietly speaking in ways that call attention to God.

My faith is not a matter of imposed rules which I must follow, "or else". It is the process of allowing God to transform me into someone that lives productively and peaceably with myself, others, and most of all with God himself.

My faith is not political – concerned with the policies of the government. It is personal, concerned with individuals' relationships with God and with each other and no more.

My faith is not a memorial of the past, honoring a distant God who departed long ago. It is a current and active relationship with Him.

My faith is not a matter of blind acceptance of things other people told me. It is something whose reality God wants to (and does) prove to me regularly.

Yet it seems what most people in America think of when they think of "Christians" (even those who think of themselves as Christians) are large denominations and institutions (and their leaders) who loudly proclaim the rules by which everyone else must live, trying to use the political process to make the US government enforce those rules as law; but whose only basis to claim that they are correct is something which happened a couple millennia ago.

I hope you understand why I feel compelled to distance myself from that.

And I am not alone in my thinking. Every where I go I meet other people whose understanding of God is the same as my own. People for whom God is current and real and whose only desire is to know Him more intimately and by that relationship to be transformed into His image. People who are conducting a quiet revolution within "the church", behind the great edifices of old, to get back to the simple truths of the Gospel: Love, Grace, Faith, Hope, and Transformation and to abandon the "religion" which has been built by men on top of those truths.

If by my writing here you get some sense that what I have experienced is somehow "different", then I have succeeded.

Posted by Steven at August 6, 2006 05:29 PM

Comments

Would that the various factions in the Middle East would adopt this philosophy. There would be much less strife in the world and we wouldn't be looking at $10/gallon gasoline in December.

Inshallah.

Posted by: Roland at August 7, 2006 01:57 PM

I'd be happy if various factions in the US would do so.

> Inshallah

God _is_ willing. People are the problem.

My pastor talked on Sunday about a documentary he saw on certain Madrasah schools in Pakistan. The segment which brought him to tears was the filmmaker interviewing a 3 year old girl who proceeded to explain why the Jews (who she described in subhuman terms which I will not repeat) were responsible for all of the world's problems and how they should all be killed. If they have already been indoctrinated like this at 3, what hope is there for them as an adult? To be fair, I know of many "Chirstain" schools in the US who produce equally indoctrinated (if slightly less violent) citizens.

Crosby Stills Nash & Young were right - Teach your children well!

Posted by: Steven at August 7, 2006 02:16 PM

Musings of a heart that is truly decent and human at its core. Any thought that is true and noble speaks first to the humanity within each of us rather than to one's religion. In that sense there should be much in common between various schools of thought (or religions) that exist primarily to make us better human beings.

I was wondering if you have read up on other schools of thought such as Buddhism in which there isn't a concept of a God as an external entity, but rather it exists as a supreme potential for the greatest good within each individual. Of course the reverse would also be true where the darkest potenial also exists within the same individual. How one chooses to expresses one's potential determines one's fate for the better or worse in the present life and the following ones.

Posted by: amar at March 13, 2007 09:39 PM

I did some study into Buddhism a while back to understand that point of view. As a moral stance there is much to be praised in it. By saying (in some form or another) that people (souls, whatever) are the only thing which is eternal (real), you necessarily are lead into productive and beneficial attitudes. As for specifics, it depends a great deal on which variation you are talking about (and I have not studied enough to talk intelligently on that subject).

However, my own experiences with a deity who is not an abstraction preclude my belief in something like. Having met God, I am unable to deny that He exists as an entity. My understanding of his nature may be incomplete; but my experience says that there is definitely a concrete person there.

Posted by: Steven at March 14, 2007 08:44 AM