Belief vs. Faith

I believe in the law of gravity. I believe the earth orbits the sun. In the Christian Church for many centuries there has been belief in the articles stated in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.  There are many things in which we believe, but do we put our faith in them?

I would say no. The 20^th Century theologian, Paul Tillich, said that what governed our faith was our “ultimate concern” and that which we sought as the “ground of our being”. I think what leads us to our ultimate concern and ground of our being, God I would say, comes through events, experiences, and relationships in our lives. Sometimes it may be combination of all of them. Through events, experiences, and relationships we gain a faith. We do not have faith just by belief in objective statements of fact.

It has been my experience that through getting to know certain people the love of God in Jesus is made real to me. There have been times when prayers were answers by events in my life which caused me to have faith and say, “Yes” to God. Those were the times I was willing to step off the ledge, so to speak, and trust God in something even when I did not have “all the facts”. I trusted; I had faith.

On and off through high school and college I felt called to go to seminary and be ordained ministry in my denomination. But several events along the way led me away from that calling. When I became active again in church I thought I was called to become an urban planner, but later found I was not being fulfilled in that vocation. I had several friends at that time who said to me they thought I was supposed to go to seminary. That was matching an inward tug I was receiving again. So I quit my job as a planner for the City of Chicago and headed off to seminary in New York City. I was nervous, little scared, and wondering what really would happen. I trusted I was making the right decision. I had faith, though I was not sure what awaited me.

I must say that I know God was leading me in the right way, and my friends and inner yearnings were God’s way of speaking to me. As soon as I arrived at General Seminary I knew I was in the right place. I had faith, even though I did not have all the facts to believe.

Faith is what helps us step out into the darkness trusting God will be there to give us a solid footing or help us sprout wings.

Fr. Patrick

Denial

The ability of humans to deny what in truth is going on is amazing. I think of this in light of the Jerry Sandusky conviction and the investigation that was authorized by the Penn State Board.  There is denial by Sandusky’s family of his predatory behavior. There was denial and cover-up by those in the highest authority at the University. There was little regard for the most vulnerable, and there was more concern about the school’s image. Now the institution’s reputation is even more ruined by the cover-up, denial and by sanctions imposed upon it.

People who are otherwise rational can also live in denial. I think of people of faith who continue to use the Bible as a scientific document to tell us the how long ago creation began – thousands of years instead of billions. This takes place even with the fossil evidence, Carbon 14 dating, and astronomers calculating the distance between heavenly bodies being billions of years away from the earth.

In the same vein I think of Christian scientists, such as Dr. Frances Collins, who led the team which mapped the human genome. Through his work and that of other scientists they have shown that DNA is the link which demonstrates the evolution of life from single cell creatures to humanity. Yet rational people still wish to believe otherwise and deny scientific reality.

It is the same mentality that caused the Roman Catholic Church to declare Galileo a heretic for stating the earth revolved around the sun. I believe it is these kinds of positions that are voiced by certain Christian groups that lead other reasonable people to think Christianity is irrelevant.

Science and religion ask different questions. Science asks how things happen and work, but does not answer why. That is the area of religion. Christianity can address why we are here, the purpose of life, and the need to be loved and love. Christianity can talk about the love of God in Christ who shares humanity’s pain and sorrows, willing to sacrifice God’s self to show that love, and in resurrection demonstrates the endlessness of Divine love.  That is what the Christian Church can address and still not leave human intellect outside the door.  

Fr. Patrick

Knowing God is Christ

Knowing God in Christ

I grew up in the Episcopal Church. My parents met in the Episcopal Church. In my home parish, in the Chicago area, I was an acolyte; youth group president, and choir member. When I returned to the church, after drifting away as in college, I taught a teen Sunday school class and was a youth group advisor.

I had come to know Jesus Christ present in the community of the parish – the worship, the sacraments, the fellowship, and outreach. That is what made Jesus real to me. Jesus was real in those relationships and the Body of Christ.

When I was in high school I attended a non-denominational youth group because lots of my friends attended. I enjoyed the fellowship and the learning in that group. My senior year I attended a spring break trip the group sponsored to Bermuda. Parts of it were lots of fun. But the leaders spoke to us many times in groups and individually. I felt pressure to see Jesus in a way different than I had known growing up in the Episcopal Church. The pressure I felt, was as we hear now, “to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior”. I believed I already knew Jesus, knew he loved me, and that was made real to me every time I went to my church – in the sacraments, learning, and fellowship

I think of this because the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the 2^nd Sunday of Easter is from John 20:19 – 31. It is about when the Resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples in the house they were all staying in Jerusalem. The disciple, Thomas, was not with them when that happened. When he was told what the others had seen and experienced he said he would not believe until he saw the Resurrected Lord for himself. A week later in the same place he got to have that encounter with the Risen Christ.

Now you might say that he got to know Jesus as his “personal Lord and Savior” in that event. I think more importantly it says something more. Jesus was known to Thomas in a way he could accept. It was not someone else’s experience or formula. It was true to who he was. I do not think that God wants is cookie – cutter experiences of the Divine as revealed in Jesus. If we believe that God created each of us then it makes sense God will reveal God’s presence to us in a way we each can understand. For me that revelation was and continues to be known in the Community of the Church, also known as the Body of Christ. I have had individual encounters with the Risen Christ, but I continue to understand him most frequently present in the context his Church.

Yes, I have a personal relationship with God, but it is made known to me through Christ’s Church. I think the fullest way we know Jesus Christ is not just alone but in community. It is there he takes on flesh and blood in the people who gather in his name, and try to make him known.

Fr. Patrick+

Everything Happens for a Reason “Rereasoned”

I have heard it said many a time, “Everything happens for a reason.” I have usually found people say this when they try to make sense out of something that seems beyond understanding or even tragic.  This seems to me to take a fatalistic approach to life.

I do agree that everything happens for a reason, but not because it was fate, destiny, or God’s will. The laws of nature are one reason things happen. If one walks off a cliff gravity will bring that person to the bottom. Some people may walk away from such a fall and some may die. I think that is more a matter of luck than Divine will.

Sometimes the reason something bad happens is human error. There are stories of planes that crashed, and it was determined that someone did not do the proper maintenance on the craft.

Sometimes the reason something happens is due to sheer stupidity. For example, there is a pedestrian hit by a car because the walker is too busy texting to look where they are going. The person walks into oncoming traffic and in front of an unsuspecting driver.

I think most often I hear the phrase “everything happens for a reason” is to equate it with Divine Providence. I was most infuriated by this attitude when a Presbyterian pastor preached at the funeral of a high school friend. This happened the summer after my sophomore year in college. My classmate, I will call him Tim, had been on a date one summer night with his girlfriend. The two of them had a horrible argument. When Tim came home he was so upset he couldn’t sleep so he got up and went for a drive. He then became tired and fell asleep in his MGB. He ended up running into an overpass abutment on the expressway and was killed. The pastor at Tim’s funeral said, “God must have wanted Tim more than we did. That is why God took him.” That was the pastor’s reason.  No, that is not the reason. The real reason why it happened was that Tim went out driving when he was tired and fell asleep – plain and simple.

What happened to Tim was a tragic thing for his family and friends, and it was senseless. God did not will that. I don’t think that God snatches a 20 year old from their families because God decides God wants them. I think God is with families at such times sending divine comfort and courage. God is present in Spirit and in those who surround the grieved with love and support.

I do not believe that God is moving us all around like chess pieces on the board of life. I believe God has preferences for our lives and may gently nudge us along a path. But which path we take is always our choice and God is with us on any pathway.

 I do not believe that God wills us to suffer. Jesus said that God is promising life abundant – full, vibrant, with some pain along the way; but at the bottom-line joyful. God in Jesus has shared our suffering and knows our suffering. God instead of manipulating us through life walks with us in lightness and in darkness. And finally Jesus’ resurrection gives us hope. That did happen for a reason, and the reason is Divine Love.

Patrick+

Celtic Spirituality

When Saint Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons of Britain in 595 A.D. he found Christianity already present.  There are reports of Christians in Roman Britain in the 1^st Century A.D.  The form of Christianity that Augustine discovered was influenced by the Celts (pronounced “Kelts”, not “Selts”). Those of Celtic origin were found in present day Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and parts of France. It was the type of Christianity that Patrick took and molded with the Druid spirituality in Ireland.

The Celtic Christianity existed alongside that brought from Rome by Augustine until the Synod of Whitby in 664 A D. At that event Saint Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfrane, agreed to accept the for all of England the Roman form of worship and order that Augustine introduced almost half a century earlier.  So Celtic Christianity took a back seat to the Roman Church for many centuries. But it was and is still present in the people of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and it has found resurgence in the North America today.

Celtic Christianity is Orthodox Christianity, and places emphasis, though, on certain principles. The spirituality of the Druids included respect for women, love of nature, and the interconnectedness of the web of all life. Celtic Christianity incorporates those principles plus the following:

 1. A love of learning.

 2. A yearning to explore the unknown and to travel.

 3. A love of silence and solitude.

 4. A deep understanding that past, present, future, and all times are connected.

 5. An appreciation of ordinary life.

 6. A valuing of kinship, confidant, or "soul friend" relationships in this time or between times

7. A thin divide between the sacred and the secular

The renewed of interest in Celtic Spirituality in recent decades is especially present as it influences Anglican Spirituality. This form of spiritual living molds well with current concern for stewardship of our earth; yearning to experience the awe and mystery of the divine in life; and seeing in The Holy in people, relationships, and places.  We have begun a regular Celtic worship service at Trinity Episcopal Church, Chambersburg, for those interested in finding a deeper spiritual experience in this vein. The Rev Rosie McGee, Chaplain at Wilson College, will speak about Celtic Spirituality in April at the monthly Coffee House at Trinity.

For more information about Celtic Christianity and Spirituality I would suggest two books: A Celtic Eucharist by Brendan O’Malley, and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal.  

Fr. Patrick

Fundamentalists of All Stripes

I read a book in Introductory Sociology my second year of college entitled, The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer. He theorized that mass movements such as Fascism, Communism, and certain religious movements required adherents to glorify the past, devalue the present, and promise a glorious future. The tenants these movements had in common were blind certainty in what they believed, demonizing those who questioned their beliefs, and having an answer to everything.

I thought of this book when a friend of mine said fundamentalists and atheists share one thing in common: they have all the answers and are certain about them.

This has all reminded me of when I was a seminarian in New York City, and did a field work placement at The Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. It is a college totally devoted to the fashion industry. A fellow student and I started a chaplaincy to the school. We were officially unofficial. We had free rein of the place; the student activities department booked rooms for us, and publicized our events, but we were NOT the school chaplains. My fellow seminarian, Bill, found a notice of a Bible Study in the dorm for resident students (by far most students commuted to the school). Bill and I decided to join the study one evening in a student's room. We sat on the floor in a circle and two students, Ken and Pam, held forth. It was Bible Study according to Ken and Pam with no questioning their teaching or take on Biblical passages. Any debate was quickly dismissed as wrong thinking and not true to the faith. I caused problems for Ken and Pam because I did question, and knew that some of their interpretations were inaccurate and I believed dangerous. The two of them questioned Bill and me offering the Lord's Prayer for several weeks in a row at closing prayers. They told us that it says in The Gospel of Matthew that Jesus said to "pray LIKE this", not pray this. Christians were only to pray the Lord's Prayer, as written in the Bible, once in their lifetime. It really was an issue over spontaneous prayer versus rote prayer, and both can be without thought or right intention.

I thought Ken and Pam gave a bizarre interpretation of this Scripture passage, and I knew they would drive me crazy if I stayed in the group. I could not work within that framework. I did work with some of the other students in this group outside the Bible Study.  Bill had more patience and stayed with the group a little longer.

This, though, is some of what Eric Hoffer and my friend were talking about. True believers have all the answers and God forbid there is any questioning. The reality is we live in a world of ambiguity. There are many shades of gray in things. I believe we walk between the poles of certainty and relativism. I know and believe in the love of God made real in Jesus of Nazareth. I have experienced it personally and in the community of Christ's church. But how that works for everyone I cannot say. All I can do is witness to what I know and be open to what others say and experience. I also believe that God's love can work though those who do not know or believe in Jesus. Sometimes I have found persons of no professed faith to make the love of God more real than those who profess to be Christians.

I do believe in the Summary of the Hebrew Law as Jesus gave us, "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." I am not a relativist, but sometimes how one lives out the Summary may vary from time to time. One of the ways that I think we show the love of God is not beating people over the heads with the Gospel and telling them they have to believe a certain way. I believe we do make real the love God by action. Jesus loved the prostitutes and tax collectors as they were. He did not say they had to change first. They changed by experiencing accepting Divine Love through Jesus.

There are not only radical fundamentalist in Christianity, but also in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Atheism to name a few. I think they are all dangerous because they share the common thread that says that everyone must see the world and world events through their eyes. This leads, at the least, to vilification of non-believers to outright persecution and violence to those who share an opposite viewpoint. To me this is not loving God or loving our neighbor as God loves them and us.

Maybe if we all saw each other as made in the Image of God we would serve and love the way Jesus loved.  We would not have to have our way dogmatically, but serve Divinely.

Biblical Idolatry

Martin Luther is to have said, "The Word of God is Jesus Christ, and the Bible was the manger in which the Word was laid."   He also said there was a lot of straw in the manger, and for him the Epistle of James was an Epistle of Straw. So the leader of the Reformation did not give equal weight to each part of Scripture.

The movement to make the entire content of the Bible inerrant or without error is a relatively new phenomenon. It happened in this country and Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a reaction to the rise of science, biblical literary criticism, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and archeological findings to name a few things. The rise of this approach to the Bible was a vast departure from Early Church Fathers such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Origen. Augustine said that the mystery of the the story of creation as told in the first chapter of Genesis has to be taken somewhat allegorically because we do not know the mind of God as God created. We needed to be open to learn more about what that all meant over time as inspired by God. Origen interpreted much of Scripture in an allegorical fashion, which surprise many folks today.

Biblical Inerrancy was a reaction to a world that seemed to be changing so rapidly, and that rapidness has only accelerated over time. But there has to be some logical gymnastics to take all parts of the Bible as literal and factual. There are contradicting statements in the Bible, such as in the first and second Creation Stories. In the first story in the first chapter of Genesis God creates everything and then creates humanity in God's image. In the story of the Garden of Eden, in the second chapter of Genesis, the human (Adam) is created first and then all the other creatures. Then God creates woman as a companion to man. So which story is factually correct - humanity created at the end or beginning of creation by God?

This question misses the point. These Biblical stories were not meant to be scientific accounts, and their truth is much deeper than just on the surface. The first story of creation is meant to show that God created everything and that is it good, including humankind made in God's Image. The second story of Adam and Eve shows that humanity is to be stewards of what God has given, but we humans put ourselves in the center of things and not God.

To me giving literal truth to every word of the Bible trivializes much of it, and misses the more significant truth that is sometimes in poetry, story, or commentary. Biblical Inerrancy  almost makes the Bible an item of worship, and if one part is proven not to be literally true then one's faith could come tumbling down.

Those ordained bishops, priests, and deacons in the Episcopal Church have to sign a document stating that they believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain all things necessary for salvation. So we take the Bible very seriously. On Sundays we read most of the Bible in a three year lectionary cycle consisting of four parts each Sunday - Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel reading. But we believe that the Scriptures have to be interpreted with guidance of the Holy Spirit and in light of history, scientific learnings, archeological findings, and the tradition of the faith. After that we can say, "What is God saying to us (not just me) today?"

A significant teacher of Bible Study in my tradition, the late Dr.Verna Dozier, said that there was a Golden Thread running through the Bible, and that thread was that "God is for us".  Every passage has to be played off that thread, and to take it out of context or that thread was to miss the point. She also said that we don't necessarily go to the Bible to find God. We go to the Bible because God has already found us, and we want to know how others have known God and how that can inform our relationship as God's people today. To me that speaks of the profound wonderful truth of the Bible, and not just as a laundry lists of "do's" and "dont's", or a scientific manual. The Bible is the story of salvation with God's people, and we are continuation of that today.