Masai Creed

I was again listening to a Speaking of Faith podcast; this time with Jaroslov Pelikan on Christian Creeds.  He cited this as one of his favorites.  It was developed in the year of my birth (1960) and, I find it wonderful.  It speaks to the contrast between general vs. specific revelation; “We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know Him in the light.”, the fact that they knew God through creation before they knew God through Jesus.

I am also touched by the focus on love; “teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love…live the rules of love, share the bread together in love…”

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created Man and wanted Man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the Earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know Him in the light. God promised in the book of His word, the Bible, that He would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good His promise by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left His home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, He rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through Him. All who have faith in Him must be sorry for their sins, be baptised in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the Good News to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for Him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

A Prayer

Thank you God for our food
Give bread to those who hunger;
and a hunger for justice for those who have bread.

My Well-Established Universalist Tendencies

A little over three years ago I posted this on Boar’s Head Tavern.  I’m not sure I’ve changed.

Since my universalistic tendencies have been well established, it seems that a few sentences, maybe a paragraph of explanation are in order.

First, I prefer to think in a universalistic manner because if it were my choice nobody would be left behind, I love the idea that all things can be reconciled in Christ. Second, by thinking universalistically I’m able to comfortably talk to everyone I encounter as if they’re a believer. Third, since I talk to everyone as if they are a believer I have no need to categorize everyone I encounter in life; I don’t need to keep a list in my head of who’s “in” and who’s “out”. This was always a tough thing for me, it caused a lot of stress, anger and sin (and I see that it causes a lot of stress, anger and sin in others). Fourth, I’ve come to believe (operationally) that salvation is God’s issue and task-at-hand, not mine.

This may be a reaction to my recent immersion in Robert Capon’s writings. It wouldn’t be my first reaction to what I’m reading. As a final note I must acknowledge that what I prefer has not always aligned with what God prefers, which is of course the genuine test of reality and truth. I’ve never been able to get my head around monergism, I just know that I made somechoices. The issue for me is that at some level of thinking about this kind of stuff my head starts making noises like it’s going to asplode, and when that happens I realize that for all of us it truly becomes like Robert Duvall’s character in Secondhand Lions, ”Hub” says: “Eventually, a man simply has to decide what he wants to believe.”

This may be why I’m likely PoMo, but that’s a subject for another post.

I found the following in the Wikipedia entry for Robert Capon:

“I am and I am not a universalist. I am one if you are talking about what God in Christ has done to save the world. The Lamb of God has not taken away the sins of some — of only the good, or the cooperative, or the select few who can manage to get their act together and die as perfect peaches. He has taken away the sins of the world — of every last being in it — and he has dropped them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he has shut up forever on the subject of guilt: “There is therefore now no condemnation. . . .” All human beings, at all times and places, are home free whether they know it or not, feel it or not, believe it or not.

“But I am not a universalist if you are talking about what people may do about accepting that happy-go-lucky gift of God’s grace. I take with utter seriousness everything that Jesus had to say about hell, including the eternal torment that such a foolish non-acceptance of his already-given acceptance must entail. All theologians who hold Scripture to be the Word of God must inevitably include in their work a tractate on hell. But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace. Grace is forever sovereign, even in Jesus’ parables of judgment. No one is ever kicked out at the end of those parables who wasn’t included in at the beginning.”

The Question Forms the Answer…

I was listening to a Speaking of Faith podcast this morning on the way to work.  John Polkinghorne was being interviewed; the title of the podcast was Quarks and Creation.  I heartily recommend it.

Rev. Dr. Polkinghorne was discussing how our questions form answers; he gave the example of the difficulty that physicists encountered when trying to determine whether light was a ‘wave’ or a ‘particle‘.  He (thankfully) simply stated that when ‘wave questions’ were asked, light behaved as a ‘wave’ and when ‘particle questions’ were asked, light behaved as a ‘particle’.

This resonated with me (there may be a pun there but I don’t know enough about physics to be sure).