Sufficient Unto the Day...

I have always had this sense that everything was going to be all right.

People accuse me of being too laid back, and I get that. I do not worry or panic about the things that normal people worry or panic about.

(as an aside - the things I DO worry about are weird as well. I worry about what the "best" thing to have for supper is. I worry about how to get 8 hours of sleep. I worry about which shirt to wear today. I worry about whether strangers think I am attractive... But when I get cancer, when there is a pandemic, when the money runs out... no worry at all)

I would love to be able to claim this is the result of faith - that I let go and let God - or put it at the feet of Jesus or some other trite and meaningless convention of faith. But it has nothing to do with faith in that sense.

I have been thinking in the midst of this pandemic and I guess the way my mind works is basically this:

I will probably be dead tomorrow. How do I have the best day ever today?

That is it in a nutshell.

So it totally explains my worries and lack of worry. I really do not care about tomorrow at any deep level. I really do not care about yesterday at any deep level. If it is happening today, then it means everything to me.

Now, as I said, this is not classical faith the way it has evolved through theology - but I wonder if it is closer to the way Jesus intended us to see the world. Is this in fact what "being religious" means?

As you can imagine, I am weathering the pandemic fairly well because I am focused almost completely on today. And today is absolutely no different from any other day in my life - except for some minor variations, and every day has minor variations, so it does not surprise me.

And because of that, I would like to make the case for ancient spiritual wisdom actually giving us the tools we need in times like this.

In my own tradition there is this whole speech Jesus gives where he says that birds of the air and flowers of the field do not worry about tomorrow - and yet they have magnificent lives. He follows this up by saying "sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof" (in the old fashioned way of our bibles) or perhaps if he was speaking to us now he might say - "there is enough to worry about right in front of you - for my sake - let it go."

And the other big spiritual gurus were pretty clear on the same thing... from Buddha who essentially said that concentrating on the here and now is the path to salvation through all the rest of them.

Live in the present. Give thanks for the present. Celebrate the goodness you see.

That is faith in action.

It is hard to do. But it is not impossible. And I guess that is where I hope we can get to. An ability to wake up and see the snow falling outside our windows, where we are locked away from the pandemic, and think - wow, pretty - and go make some toast.

The moment is all that there is. Make the most of it. That is what Jesus would have done.

The Past as Present - On Essential Agreement

This post is more United Church of Canada than some - but should perhaps allow anyone to think about the relationship we have to the thinking of the past...

In explanation - when one is ordained into ministry in the United Church, we make a promise, backed up by people who have examined us, that we are in essential agreement with the recorded faith position of the church.

In our case that is taken to be the four positions we have taken: The 20 Articles of Faith (1925), The Statement of Faith (1940), the New Creed (1968) and the Song of Faith (2006)

It is interesting that if you take the last and read it - our faith is very poetic, very accessible, and very much based on the idea of human development towards the good. It seems, tilted, towards a modern way of thinking.

If you start the other way around and read the 1925 version is it like the King James Bible - jarring in its use of words we no longer use in phrases we no longer use. The tilt in this case is towards the power of God. God did things, in fact, everything, and we respond.

But like it or not, if you sit down and read carefully the "words" of all of these positions, carefully trying to weed out the poetic voice, they are, to quote the church, in essential agreement with each other.

You, as an average reader, would not want to do that, trust me. But in fact, the 20 articles are a bit repetitive, and thus with each version it gets shorter.... but almost nothing changes.

in 1940 We added the idea that God made us to be in "loving" relationship - not just relationship, while we admitted that Jesus, though God, also lived the perfect human life.

in 1968 we added the tag line, "to live with respect in Creation" which was pretty much the first time we officially suggested the idea of respect, or relationship with the created world around us.

and in 2006 God became less the old man in the sky, adjectives like Mother were added. The other major thing that I can see is that it says Jesus was put to death by the people... in other words, we are to blame. Where before it was stated as being more part of God's original plan.

But when we say essential agreement we are basically saying this:

We believe there is one God, who somehow exists in three: Creator, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Who is active in the world and in the heart of people. Who gives us free choice to turn away from the path, but who has planned out the path. Adam and Eve sinned and all of us have that kernel of sin within us, but God calls us and redeems us. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, came to earth and taught us how to be more faithful before being executed. By being executed as an innocent Jesus paid off our debt and saved us. Believe that and try hard to allow the Holy Spirit to work within you and you will be judged good after death and live forever with God, if not, you will be cast out.

Now, as you can imagine, there is more. It defines ministry, and church, and right action, and so much more... but "essential agreement" does not boil down to the nitty gritty, it boils down to the core of what is being said. Which is as above. Yes, yes, I know if you are a theologian you are going to say I did not express some stuff well enough, or deep enough, ok, it is more complicated than that, I agree.

NOW

In the United Church we have come under scrutiny of late because the fact is, clergy have, for some time, defined essentially pretty loosely.

I believe there is good and bad - so if you want to define it with personalities, ok. Let's call "Good" "God" 

(I made that up - but you get the point - do you, essentially agree with the above... there is a lot of wiggle room.)

It is being argued that the wiggle room did not include the modern post-theistic, radical progressive views that are held by many on one side of our church. And to be honest, I think they have a point. The reworking of those 20 articles over the last 100 years never touched the core belief. We have to admit that the United Church, for all of its social justice and left leaning history has stayed true to what it said it believed in 1925. We just say it in modern ways.

Which leads to a big problem.

And here is how I see the problem. The problem is that the faith statement of the United Church is bound to an antique way of understanding science, sociology, psychology and culture.

It is not the church that has moved - it is the world that has moved.

And somewhere along the way we forgot to write into our faith the belief that everything changes. In fact, we wrote the opposite - saying that things like God, the church, Jesus... are forever the same. Unchanging, immutable, etc.

But... no.  Galileo famously came up hard against the church when he claimed the Earth rotated around the Sun and not vice versa. They put him in jail and let him rot as a heretic. To be honest, the church did not care about celestial mechanics at all. Whether it is a circle or an ellipse, that meteors might seem to disappear and come back... who cares. What matters is that God is from Earth and therefore Earth is the centre of everything. That is what Galileo denied.

And we know he was right.

And because, eventually (in reality it took 350 years and the church only admitted he was right in 1992) we came to see that he was right, societal understanding changed. God was up/out there and not on earth. But we were still the favourites.

The reason people do not come to church these days, I think, has a lot to do with how far we have moved in our cultural understanding such that being in essential agreement with those 20 articles seems somehow wrong.

In basic ways, why would God only save the Jews? Why would the Messiah only come and save the western world? How do Buddha and Mohammed fit in? What "plan" are we talking about? The world certainly does not seem to be getting better and better every year? What do you mean prayers are answered? Most of us suffer greatly despite asking for help repeatedly... And on and on we could go.

You see, even the Bible, which is a record of peoples thoughts about God over 1000 years or so, portrays God as being so radically different at different times, that a lot of people assume the God of the Old Testament was a whole other person.

So when Jesus taught, he taught a radically different way of seeing holiness and humanity than that which had come before.... Which makes me wonder.... if someone comes along now... are they not also going to radically alter the way we see holiness and humanity?

Was it not the pharisees and the sadduccees, those we now consider the enemies of truth, but who were at the time, the church, who tried to stop Jesus from saying new and heretical things?

Maybe, just maybe, the essential agreement we should be adhering to is agreement to the statement:

WE CANNOT SEEM TO GET HOW TO BE GOOD - WE NEED TO KEEP TRYING NEW WAYS TO EXPLAIN IT 

In the Beginning... Was the WAY

Before the church councils, before the church fathers, before the Gospel writers, there was a creed that was the central tenet of belief for the fledgling group of followers mourning the loss of Jesus.

"Jesus is Lord!"

That is it. That's all. No Trinitarian formulations, no doctrine of salvation... just a claim that at the centre of all we are and all we think is Jesus. 

Now, scholars and folks will tell you that this had serious overtones and repercussions. "Lord" (Kurios in Greek and Adonai in Hebrew) was a term of social understanding given to one who is your better. But at its core it simply means ruler. 

One of the main problems was that the Roman Emperor at the time, Octavian, carried the title Augustus, a fancy religious term for Lord. In other words - the Emperor was Lord, not Jesus - or vice versa depending on where you stand. 

Most agree however, that whether you said this for political or religious reasons, the point of Jesus is Lord is that you give yourself completely over to the teachings and examples of this guru and become someone who owes everything and does everything for Jesus. 

I occasionally find myself pausing to wonder if 2,000 years of interpretation and development within the church did not lead us astray from everything Jesus stood for. But to say it less dramatically, I wonder if we are too often putting our thought and emphasis on the wrong thing.

The "Church" is an institution. The Creeds are interpretation. The priests are intermediaries. And we are a hundred steps away from being actual followers of Jesus. 

Even - and I mean this in the best possible way - even if we could determine what Jesus actually meant without it going through the filter of Paul, and the church, and all of those writings and sermons.... Even then - would most of us who attend or work for a denomination of this global network of institutions be able to say we are following Jesus? 

I had a professor once, and I cannot remember who or where or when, sorry, who told us that the original title for the movement that came about after Jesus was "The Way" The people of the Way were the people who followed the example of Jesus.

And in the early church they took this stuff seriously. They gave away their possessions, they decided not to get married or buy property, they lived together and shared everything in a good socialist way - knowing that this brought them closer to being able to live like Jesus... who was, by all accounts, a wandering, poor, itinerant preacher and teacher. 

Now, none of this is new thought - I want to make that clear. Some of the best minds of recent years within the Christian Thought Factory have written and dissected the idea of Empire and how Jesus lived in opposition to it.

But as a progressive who is trying to make their way in the dying days of ecclesial empire, I think about this at a much more practical level.

How far away am I from living and thinking like Jesus. How would I reclaim the original intent of the faith which was much more of a social reform movement than anything else? How do I lead a congregation in a way that actually honours what Jesus was trying to get across and does not just build on the last millennium or two of Christian Empire building.

First off - I no longer like to use the word Christian. I think we should go back to People of the Way.

Secondly - I think the focus of worship and work within existing church structures should change to be about social justice as the main path to spiritual enlightenment. Or, to be more direct, love and loving everyone should be the main path to spiritual enlightenment.

But mostly I think we need to let go of all the division and fighting that happens in the modern church as we struggle to take our last gasp before going under. We need to understand that almost everything we fight about is made up, an interpretation, or at best, our opinion.

Whether you are left, right, up or down in your own thinking, we can all agree that Jesus basic answer to every question was "love everybody"

how about we focus on that for a while? 

Daisies Pushing Through

Today is 9/11. The first 9/11 I have been in full-time ministry for quite some time.

The original 9/11 was a bit of a problem for me. See, I was a young Turk, second pastoral charge, South Shore Suburban Montreal, meteoric career path, doing graduate studies, and I had a lot of answers.

I also had a parishioner, who worked in the Twin Towers, who had married the love of her life that summer. A Jewish guy from New York who seemed really cool and they seemed perfect together.

They died. Horrifically. Their death certificates said they were murdered. I sat with the family for weeks while they waited for news. More weeks while they confronted the inevitable. Then we set down to plan the largest funeral of my life.

Two years before this the worst funeral I did was for a young teenager, whose friends had stolen his clothes while he was in the river swimming with them. He was too embarrassed to get out, and they watched him drown.

9/11 was when I stopped believing in God.

9/11 was when I became an A/Theist

I gave up graduate school. I left Quebec. I left my wife. I left the church. Eventually.

Nothing was ever the same after that because I knew I was a fraud. I was a fraud because I told people that God loved them, that God had a plan, that History unfolded according to some predetermined but ultimately glorious outcome.

That outcome, it turns out, is hatred and death.

And God? God does nothing.

I am a master theologian. I studied ethics with Gregory Baum, Systematics with Doug Hall, Reformation History with Ed Furcha. If I had of written my Theses I would have ended up with five university degrees in Systematic Theology and Religious Studies instead of the three I have now.

And in one fell swoop, thousands of years of the greatest thought on the nature and essence of God meant nothing to me. My experience. My feelings. My mind told me there was no old man in the clouds who could make things better. If there was, he would.

18 years later and I am back in the pulpit.

And I believe in God.

And I am an Athiest.

But it took me a long time, a lot of reading, and a lot of feeling to put Humpty back together again.

Atheism got a lot of press for a while with the Christopher Hutchins of the world, and then the Greta Vosper debacle in the United Church of Canada. I read all that too.

I know that most people should have looked this up before if they follow any of this stuff - but Atheism does not mean "does not believe in God" it means "against theism"

And theism is a belief in the existence of one God, as the creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.

Which is nonsense. There is no old man in the sky deciding who lives and dies. That idea is just untenable. And causes nothing but problems. For example, if we pray hard enough to our god, then he will listen and vanquish our enemies. Or I am cured of my cancer because God loves me. But Billy over there dies from the same surgery because of... what? God hates him?

We are a people of stories - that is what defines us - and throughout history, we have told stories where God is on our side, because it makes us feel better, and because we wanted something.

We created God in our image because it was the best that we could do. But we have had thousands of years of history and development and thought and grace and love and hate and it should have taught us how to move past this.

To me God is the collective spirit of Good in the universe, perhaps drawn from the living organic creatures in the same way we name Gaia the collective spirit of or energy from the planet.

People said of Greta Vosper, how can an atheist remain a minister. Well, the simple answer is that theism is a small part of our understanding of what God is or could be, and not subscribing to theism does not mean that one does not subscribe to the idea of divinity, of God(s), of the spiritual, or the magical.

So I am back in full time because, I guess, the thing of it is, I still believe in the idea of goodness and that we need to actively work at being good, helping each other to love, and spreading the message of hope.

I have a social media presence. I just need to turn on my computer to feel bad about the world. But we still have a role to play by being followers of Jesus, who basically wanted us to enjoy life and love abundantly.

That is what 9/11 did to me. It made me into the person Jesus would have loved to drink with.

Face(book)ing Depression

Everyone has their triggers. Everyone has something that annoys them.

It has been a year now since the Journal of Social and Clinical  Psychology published a study saying that Facebook leads to depression. Other studies have come to a similar conclusion and it may not be limited to Facebook as a platform.

In my way of seeing it, there could be many reasons for this link. First off social media presents a lot of the world in an easily digestible form. Therefore I end up knowing and hearing all too often that the polar ice is melting, whale carcasses are washing up, mass murder is going on, death, destruction etc... All of the things that would normally depress us are amplified. Then there is the whole comparative factor where I get to see my contemporaries who are enjoying their hot tubs and SeaDoos while I am trying to decide if I can afford to get a coffee at Tim's this morning.

Last but not least there is the way that it somehow makes us lose our faith in humanity. I blame this mostly on the comments section. It is as if we gave all the crazies who used to write letters to the editor (and get weeded out) free reign to instantly publish their diatribe to an audience of millions. Thus anti-vaxxers and climate emergency deniers, evolution protesters and, well, mean people, seem to be getting a louder and louder voice. 

I have my own problem that combines the two of these things. Triggers, depression, and "fake news."

It all started when I went to seminary yet continued my unabashed love of storytelling and movies. I watched a lot of movies. There are religious people in a lot of movies. They are by and large Catholics. I remember saying to anyone and everyone who listened that this was a pretty one-sided view of the church and clergy.

Then the Millenium brought to the forefront the wackadoodles, which is the official term, who thought that the world was ending.

But now... Now... I cannot turn to Facebook and scroll without seeing religion portrayed as some abomination. Whether it is people talking about Trump and therefore the conservative right-wing church in the states, or anti LGBQT+ propaganda, or, well, anything.

We have created a world where the wackadoodles get top billing and the moderates or liberals are left shaking their heads.

The thing is, I am depressed because this is becoming the way most people understand the church. Understand me. And I more than ever think we need the opposite.

I know I am over-educated, I know I am liberal and left-wing, but seriously... how can anyone believe some of the rhetoric of these people who have stolen Christianity and made it so narrow and hateful?

Jesus and his followers were exactly like me. left-wing, lovey-dovey, radical protestors who talked about the hippy ideals of love, peace, and understanding. That is not an opinion, that is not a guess, it is historically and accurately portrayed in every facet of not only the Bible but of Roman history. That is why he was killed, as a traitor to the Roman government, for inciting rebellion, in the name of peaceful civil protest for equality.

It is just not really debatable. "Love everyone," said Jesus... and no matter what anyone else said - "you don't mean Romans? Slaves? Blacks? Jews? Samaritans? Cops? Politicians? Sick People? Poor People?" Jesus said, "Did I stutter? EVERYONE!"

But I turn to Facebook and there is a priest supporting Donald Trump. There is a pastor saying gays are going to burn in hell. There is a sociologist blaming the church for racist political agendas.

And I have been forced into the place of an apologist (for those who do not study church history - I mean that academically as the type of Christian writer who writes about the faith for non-believers in order to point out that it is actually a pretty cool thing).

And it is hard. It is what made me take a break from ministry for a while. It is what keeps me up at night. I don't want to be associated with the wackadoodles. But they seem to be multiplying.

Even in the progressive and left-wing United Church of Canada we are becoming more and more conservative and literalist. Both of which are SO not Jesus like that I cannot believe people are not seeing it.

I don't know. Maybe the psychiatrists are right and the only thing I can do is abandon social media.

But then again - someone has to keep trying to present the other side. 

This is Us!

Donald Trump relies on the fact that you believe in stereotypes.

Other people have said this or things like my opening statement to various degrees and purposes. But for now, let me point out that Mexicans are violent drug addicts who somehow live their entire lives trying to steal jobs from ordinary working-class Americans.

One trip to Mexico City should dissuade most people of this. And if that does not work make your way over to the Museo Nacional de Antropología, one of the ten best museums in Mexico City (yes, one of the top ten - there are more than ten) and you will get a pretty complete education of the cultural and historical people of Mexico.

Defining Mexican people as lazy violent sheep stealing vagabonds is about as useful as defining Americans as orange haired megalomaniac sexist racist narcissists.

Most of the world sees this - right? Very few people are so narrow-minded as to say all Americans are, all blacks are, all natives are, all Irish are... It is impossible to lump a whole people into a category and have it hold up (except for Cape Bretoners - they are all the same, what?)

In fact - white male Maritimers like me range from ignorant bastards right through to saints. From smart to dumb and rich to poor. Some are faithful and some are criminals. And that pretty much is just looking at my High School graduation class for statistical analysis.

And then we come to church.

There is this most bizarre of phenomenon where "Are you a Christian" usually means, are you a clone of me. Which is ridiculous.

I overheard a story where a minister actually said: "We don't believe that." to someone. And I am afraid it sort of set me off as this column testifies to. There is no "we." There really isn't. There never was.

If I preach a sermon to 50 people and say something fairly benign. Like, Jesus wants you to be good people. Then I guarantee I have just encountered 51 completely different definitions of the word "good."

Even should I choose to go completely religious on people and say Salvation through Jesus means acceptance into heaven, I have now exponentially diversified belief.  Every single person in the room has their own definition of Jesus, salvation, acceptance, and heaven.

"We believe that Jesus saves us so we get into heaven" is almost a nonsensical statement when you stop and think about it.

And this is where religion has always broken down in my mind - there is no US.

There does not need to be, there should not be. I was asked in an interview "what is your theology" and my answer was that it did not matter. I am not there to make you believe what I believe, I am there to help you work out your own existential questions and come to peace with the universe.

And when we say, people are not coming to church anymore, people are not Christian anymore, etc. The truth is we are defining narrowly again. People are having trouble subscribing to a set of beliefs that institute one way of thinking and declare it to be universally right for everyone.

People are still asking religious questions like why am I here, and what is my purpose, etc. But they want to come up with answers that echo truth and their own experience.

People like Richard Rohr on the one hand, or John Shelby Spong, or Greta Vosper or even Michael Hutchins are actually doing a better job of evangelizing God than most churches. Why? because they are the ones pointing out that the know it all answers of a hierarchical and medieval church might not actually capture faith for the majority of people.

When we step out of the comfort zone and realize that there is no universal truth in the way the church has argued, then we begin to allow people space to actually find faith.

And it is faith in the axioms, the overarching things that human experience reminds us are part of the sacred, part of the divine, like love, like acceptance, like grace, like passion...

Jesus said different things to different people. So did Muhammed and Buddha. All of them were trying to help people find deeper meaning within themselves, to get in touch with their own divinity.

And the only way we are going to contribute to this endeavour, to this "work of God" is to stop with the narrow definitions. To stop with the assertion that there is a right and a wrong way.

I am a Christian who thinks reincarnation makes more sense than heaven (or at the very least I am for Elysium Fields and Valhalla) I am a Christian who thinks Jesus was no more divine than I am. I am a Christian who thinks God is the force from Star Wars. I am a Christian who thinks that Shamanism makes complete sense in a way that Christian Theology does not.

But most of all - I am a guy, who wants you to find and be your best self. I want to explore that with people in song and story and conversations over hot or cold beverages and try to make this world soooo much better. That to me is at the core of the ministry. It has nothing to do with what I proclaim from the pulpit unless what I am saying is, you are loved, you got this, whatever you believe is valid if it brings you a sense of the sacred, and we are all in this together.

Saying there is one true path has never helped anyone. Ever. Ask Jesus.

What We Lost in the Fire

Tis really a requiem for those verdant hippy days of yore 

So - do you remember the 80's? Do you remember the 80's in the United Church? Oh those heady days when we were clearly the largest protestant denomination in Canada and quite a lot of people still went to church. 

I was younger then, and easily influenced, and as a teenager joined the church - my family was not United Church and yet - for me - it was everything. 

I was a kid who wanted to change the world. I joined Greenpeace, I advocated for ecology, I did all those 80'ish type things. 

And each and every year the United Church came out with a powerful position on world events - and mission themes to go with them.

It was the United Church that made me aware of South Africa and Apartheid. It was because of them that I read the book BIKO and became an advocate. 

And that was true of women in ministry, of LGBTQ++ rights, or Palestine... of so many things. 

You see, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time lately thinking about why the church exists. 

I work in a small congregation where there are few people and few resources. I also minister to a huge university where there are thousands of people and little desire. Both things serve as a sort of crucible of thought - allowing me to ask specific questions of myself and others in comparison to entirely different cultural and social realities.  

Or to make that entire paragraph into a simple sentence - I get to ask why old people and young people do not come to church. 

And I really think the idea is tied up in the "what good do we do?" question.

There seems to be a trend lately to pretend that what we do is saving souls. I think this started because people in mainline churches were thinking evangelical churches were still in good shape because of this emphasis. This is entirely incorrect - evangelical congregations attract a mere 2% of Canadians while the United Church can still claim around 6% (the Catholics were at 38% or they were before this latest round of scandal)

But you know when people really paid attention to the United Church? When we advocated for social issues. We were the people the government of Canada consulted with around Gay Marriage. You know why? We had a history of standing up for, fighting for, and developing new ways of seeing those said underdogs.

We were LGBTQ++ before it was cool. We ordained women before women were seen as equals. We stood for something Jesus liked to call the Kingdom of Heaven... or as we might say it now, making things right here on Earth.

You know what truly does not matter to most people, or to the world, or even to God? Whether or not you accept Jesus as Christ and your personal saviour. Whether or not you believe in God or call God father, sister, mother, brother. Whether you believe in the Trinity and virgin birth... or whether you have been saved - whatever that means...

When people worshiped Jesus in his own day and age he kept saying, Cut that out. I am no one. I am just trying to point the way.

And when people said, ok, what is the way? Jesus said - love everyone, love yourself, love God, take care of widows and orphans, don't lie cheat or steal, etc. etc. etc.

JESUS' WAY WAS SOCIAL JUSTICE

And when we concentrated on what Jesus cared about - people cared about us. We were a player on the world stage.

Now our concern is about doctrine and thought policing, about saving souls and things we did not care about in our heyday.

Why is no one seeing the correlation?

I DON'T BELIEVE THAT!

Creeds

I often hear people saying that the reason they cannot hold on to Christianity comes from their inability to believe in all the magic stuff - the supernatural stuff...

I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to either saying things like this or nodding my head knowingly when someone else says it. But for some reason, it has never occurred to me to ask what exactly I am talking about. What "stuff" are we having trouble with? And why?

I have simply made the assumption that people are talking about where science and religious history part ways: seven days to create the universe, Adam and Eve, the flood, parting the red sea, virgin birth, angels, resurrection of the dead... those sort of extravagant times when God causes the impossible to become reality.

I realize that thousands of years and far better minds than mine have fought these arguments and argued even wilder realities from how many levels of hell right through to angels on the head of a pin.

Without fact checking every verse of the Gospels I have to say that it seems to me that Jesus never, ever, said we had to believe certain facts, miracles, or proofs in order to follow his way. Not only that, but it seems to me he had campfire discussions with Nichodemus and upper room demonstrations with Thomas that made it clear that even the opposite is true. I don't care what you believe, I care what you do. That could almost have been the motto of the early church.

So what happened?

How did:
Do you follow Jesus - meaning do you live like Jesus lived
Become:
Do you believe this teaching?

In the traditional historical way of thinking it was the "church" that developed the "creed" As the organization got more power, and the people solidified who was in and who was outside of the church - certain statements of belief, the earliest being the Apostle's Creed and later the Nicene Creed became sort of gate-keeper documents. Believe this and you are like us... So basically you are talking about these points as a minimum you "must" believe:

 - There is one God who created everything
- There is one son of God, Jesus, who was born by a virgin named Mary
- Jesus suffered, was crucified, died, descended into hell, and rose from the dead three days later
- Jesus went up to heaven, alive, and is coming back to judge us.
- There is a holy spirit that is active in the world in between. 

I don't know - even that is more basic than where we are now. As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of people out there who think that you are not a real Christian unless you believe certain things.

Fundamentalism

At the turn of the 20th century, there was a movement that traces its roots back to Wesley and the Great Awakening but basically culminated in the publication of a book called "The Fundamentals" which was distributed throughout North America for free and was sent to over 3 million clergy and laypeople. It made the case that there were certain fundamental things - there were a lot, but these are the key ones:

• The inerrancy of the Bible
• The literal nature of the biblical accounts, especially regarding Christ's miracles and the Creation account in Genesis
• The virgin birth of Christ
• The bodily resurrection and physical return of Christ
• The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross

Okay, but seriously - why? Again the case is being made that what matters most is that you ascribe to certain beliefs, certain "truths" that in and of themselves do not matter...

I can believe the Bible is completely true, every magic thing Jesus did was true, and that Jesus died on the cross to forgive my sins - and I can also abuse my wife, own slaves, torture children and in fact kill a whole lot of people without contradicting those beliefs. How can that possibly be the truth?

But this is the thing we have forever lost sight of - the letter of the law is almost not important at all compared to the spirit of the law. If you want a biblical proof text to back me up, how about that whole time when Jesus said, if you were my followers you would have treated the widows and orphans better. 

There it is in a nutshell - following Jesus is taking care of all the widows and orphans. 

It makes me wonder what would happen if we totally lost the rulebook and started a church that just did what Jesus did....