STATEMENT OF FAITH

Along with being quite traditional in theology, I am passionate about connecting and communicating in our contemporary culture. So, as a flavor of that, what follows has an unchurched or de-churched person, or ‘none’ in mind: minimal jargon, high transparency, and trying to translate that traditional theology into understandable, everyday language. I hope this will provide a faith statement and a window into how I understand my calling.

We (human beings) are messed-up creatures. I know that intuitively and deeply. We put on a front, but behind it, we are a wreck. If and when we think about goodness and God and love and getting our act together, we realize that it is beyond our power. As AA says, we’ve got to realize we have a problem and that we need something bigger than us and outside of us to help. The story of the Bible and the story I believe as truth is that there is a real and personal God who is that something. God is real! We don’t just create our own god – that would still just be us. God is personal because God gets involved: we matter!

The story of the Bible is that this real and personal God got involved, making the world and everything in it. God allowed us the freedom to choose the right thing and the wrong thing. When we choose the wrong thing, God doesn’t abandon us, but comes after us, like I did when I used to let my young child ride her scooter in the cul-de-sac (freedom!) and she didn’t look out for and get out of the way of an oncoming car (choosing the wrong). I ran after her! God has run after us in Jesus Christ. God became completely human, born into the world as Jesus of Nazareth and yet still completely God, and taught and lived and died to come after me. When Jesus died on the cross, he took my messed-up life as his own, in the same way that I might run, leap in front of an oncoming car, and shove that wayward child out of the street. Jesus has done that for you and for me! And his message was, “Come and believe that I am who I said I am and that I have done what I said I would do. Come and follow me.” That’s what it means to be a Christian – to come, meet God through the Jesus Christ of the Bible, trust him, and follow him out into the world in service, compassion, justice, and love for the world.

I belong to God because I follow Jesus Christ. Just as God raised Jesus up from death itself (the Easter story!), God raises the mess that is me up to a new life. Jesus said that would be kind of like being born all over again (John 3). That is the Christian life – a new start and a new life because of trusting and following Jesus. And through Jesus, God promises new life forever –that’s Heaven... new life with God forever. How does one get all that? What are the mechanics? Jesus said, “Come, listen and learn, believe, trust, and follow me.”