My purpose for writing is primarily personal, to share my own thoughts, struggles and beliefs with my friends and family. My secondary purpose is to provide useful resources I have discovered along my own path. Resources that can help establish strong and health foundations. As part of this is personal struggles and part of it is for foundational materials, I will attempt to tag posts accordingly. Foundational matters will be labeled #foundations, #essentials or #umc. Personal struggles or beliefs I will label (#personal or #speculative).

#foundation or #essentials

Things I believe are essential, and hopefully in the most ecumenical sense.

#umc

Things more pertinent to a United Methodist Foundation

#personal

I believe but does not represent the ecumenical or even necessarily the United Methodist Church

#speculative

Things I’m not sure of or Exploring

Along the way I hope To Foster:

Healthy Foundations

An Active and Ongoing Faith

A Critical and Thinking Faith

A Personal & Communal Faith

An Ecumenical Faith

Healthy foundations

The church today is splintered.  Some of us experience this on a very personal level watching as their own local church threatens to split.  Some of us have already experienced such a split.  Others experience it with more distance as we debate between Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical or Orthodox.  Me personally I sit and wait as the United Methodist Church debates a split on a denominational level.  I assert that despite this there are essential Christian truths that transcends our differences.  I asset that there is value in acknowledging and finding this common ground.  I believe that this common ground is the healthy foundation of any Christian theology and faith.

I intend explore these essential truths (dogma) by reviewing those teachings affirmed by the early church and re-affirmed by the Church (Universal) today.  When dogma is debated I hope to provide you resources to review the various sides of the issue.  I will try to reflect them in such a manner as to reflect the Church (Universal) but I acknowledge that they will be filtered through my own faith, context and experience.  I also intend to define what the Church (Universal) agrees is separate from and contrary to Christianity (heresy).  As such I hope to provide a foundation of essential Christianity: not in a way as to be authoritative or creedal but as starting point with tools to move on to a deeper understanding and more committed Christian faith.

Active and Ongoing Faith

I want your faith to be one of more than study.  I won’t focus too much on telling you to be active but encouraging you to be so.  I want your faith to be one that grows through regular interaction with the world.  Scripture tells us that faith produces good fruits.  It tells us that though a branch may be grafted in through faith, the absence of faith and good fruits can likewise cause the branch to be pruned.  That is never to say that works are necessary or sufficient to salvation, but that active faith produces by its very nature good works in us.  It is the struggle to grow in understanding and obedience to the ultimate will of God.  That obedience should not be offered only out of devotion, or homage (though God is worthy of both) but also because in doing so we become our truest and most perfect selves.

“You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway” – Robert Jordan in Winters Heart

There is truth in this statement that we as Christians can learn from.  First is that we cannot know everything, and particularly about God.  Second is that even some of what we think we know about God may not be true at all.  There are things that we may even to believe to be dogma (essential) that we get wrong.  I am not encouraging pluralism here.  I do not say we must believe that Christ is subject to doubt and that we should entertain with seriousness that the whole of Christianity could be wrong.  As a believer I believe because of my relational experience of the incarnate Lord and the working of his spirit within my heart.  I do believe we must be carefully not to hold so tightly to any one idea, that we cannot recognize when scripture, spirit, reason, and/or experience try to correct us.  The courage is moving forward in uncertainty and in our willingness to reform our own dogmas when necessary.

“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”  – Aristotle

Most student of theology will fondly embrace the sentiment of Aristotle.  This idea that even as our understanding grows, that understanding makes you begin to realize the vastness of knowledge still untapped.  It is like approaching a mountain that only gets bigger the closer you get, only in this case you never quite reach the base.  As such I believe that faith should always be active and ongoing.  Faith is a journey without end.  It is a struggle.  It is personal but not only personal.  As stewards of the world God entrusts us to take care of this world.  It is important that we get it right.  The planet, its creatures, and the people of the world are in our care.  To understand that solemn duty is to seek God.  We are responsible as the Church (Universal) for the welfare and betterment of all of creation.  We are a people blessed to be a blessing.  God cares and tends his flock not only for the good of the flock but that all people and creation might be saved.  The Holy Spirit should be moving in us and we should be striving towards Christian Holiness.

Critical and Thinking Faith

I believe that faith should be critical & thinking. Context is a huge part of good theology.  We need to be careful not to bring too much of our own baggage, prejudice and bias into our theology.  In the end it is unavoidable to bring some of this baggage in as that baggage is part of who we are, but we can reduce the effects it has on us.  Part of how we do so is in identifying the baggage and being aware of the influence it has over us.  There is often this idea that we can just do as the Bible tells us.  The idea is that you don’t have to think just obey.  The problem with that is two fold.  First we have a brain.  We are going to think about it and how we think about it is going to affect us.  Second and more importantly the Bible is not a simple book to follow.  It requires much of us to faithful approach the text and truly learn what it requires of us.

The Bible is not a perfect instructional manual with a index for every issue facing humanity.  It is very clear on some things.  For example I think that murder and rape are clearly prohibited actions.  On other issues it is less clear.  For example should women speak in church?  Many especially who read with a more literal interpretation would point to Paul and say absolutely not.  Others would adamantly disagree with this.  They do not dispute that Paul wrote these instructions, instead they would argue that Paul wrote to a particular context which is not applicable to the church as a whole.  How about slavery?  Slave owners took much solace in the multitude of scripture that allows for slavery.  It does not directly tell us not to.  It does not directly tell us that slavery is wrong.  And yet most of us I would hope would agree that the Bible as a whole speaks adamantly against it in the themes and messages in conveys.

It is not as simple as read the Bible and do what it says.  It is a long book.  It is a complicated book.  It is written over a huge amount of times but a variety of authors in many styles, genres, and for many purposes.  We need help.  We need to think critically.  We need to interpret.  We need to be careful not let our baggage clutter and distort the true message.  There are times that the Bible either contradicts or seems to contradict itself.  The church is primarily our source for help in doing so, but as such even the Church (Universal) is human.  Occasionally the church will get it wrong.  It is our duty as the congregation to ask tough questions and engage critically.  I believe that we have a personal responsibility to reflect on the teachings of the church.

I believe faith has the most power when it isn’t blind.  I believe that reflection should ask, question, and challenge when necessary.  I believe that it is the only form of true and healthy faith.  Faith that is not doing these things is fragile or dead.  It is in understanding and true belief that our lives our changed, transformed and enriched.  That is not to say we should take the church lightly.  That is not to say we should dismiss out of hand.  We should not simply believe a faith and live a life of our own choosing as the wind blows our heart or our limited reason alone directs us.  The churches teachings should have weight and should not easily be discarded.  Instead the church is the community of God and as such we are responsible to help it grow.

Personal & Communal Faith

Faith by its very nature is intensely personal.  It will emerge and expressive itself differently in all of us reflecting the diversity of personalities, characters, and experiences we encounter.  As such our growth and understanding will be just as varied.  How we come to those understandings will be different as well.  We may read the same book and come to radically different conclusions.  Faith is a journey.  As such you will find both beginning and mature Christians.  You must accept your own place on the journey without jealously for those ahead or contempt for those behind.  Faith does not exist in a vacuum.  Just because the journey is personal does not mean it can be taken alone.  We may find ourselves alone and isolated for a time but we must always return to community.  It is in our bones.  Faith needs not just a foundation of knowledge but of people.

Though I may provide some foundational knowledge I should not be your foundation.  I mean it.  I will share a foundational knowledge of creeds, truths and heresies.  I will provide you with tools and primers that help define what a healthy faith community looks like.  But as Christians we are not called to a solitary faith.  We are not called to live in isolation.  We are by nature relational.  As such you need a healthy foundation, a foundation of people.   That foundation cannot simply be those truths that I echo and layout in isolation here.  Though I draw on others and try to present a view consistent with the church at large, I am one.  I am human.  I am suspect.  My faith is ongoing.  Instead you need a community of mature believers to be your home base.  People who can know you and people you can know.  People that you can question with, debate with, fellowship with and pray with.  I instead state that if you use the teachings I have outlined here you can hopefully recognize or find a mature faith community in which to ground yourself.

An Ecumenical Faith

We should be united in Baptism and called together by the spirit.  As Christ instructs the church should be one body.  But like anything in life, what should be simple is not.  Life is messy.  We let differences divide and separate the church.  Sometimes division is necessary.  There is truly a matter of dogma essential to who we believe we are as Christian that is so deep we simply cannot stay together.  All too often I fear we mistake tensions in faith with tensions in dogma.  We encounter contrary teachings and thoughts separate from our own as dangerous and harmful.  Fear drives us apart.  We group together with like minded individuals, surrounding ourselves with those who share our views.  To a certain extent this is human, normal, and healthy.  We need a solid base to come back to which can allow us to encounter differences safely.  That place should be a place though that allows you to struggle together safely not just reinforces our own baggage.

Lets return for a moment to dogma, these are the obvious and or essential truths which we hold so dear and essential being Christians that we cannot be Christian and accept an alternative teaching.  Those alternative teachings are heresies, those beliefs so anathema to our understanding of faith that we are no longer able to call it Christian.  I am not saying we should just let these teachings go in the sake of unity and peace within the church.  When we encounter them we should seek to correct and rebuke with love through the teaching of sound doctrine (right belief).  It is all the lesser issues which we struggle that we should be able to put aside when necessary for the good of the church and the world.  We should struggle.  We should debate.  We should disagree.  Tensions respected are healthy for ourselves and for the church.  It is how we grow.  But we should also be able to put down those lesser issues to minister in love and fellowship.