Believing

As I’ve mentioned many times, the New Testament concept of ‘belief’ is less about head knowledge and much more about a willingness to trust/lean into/hope beyond yourself.  We’re all on different journeys of faith; or perhaps better put, we’re all at different stops along a spectrum of faith.  And yet, I consider faith is much more complex than a simple spectrum like a line.  Consider a Mobius Strip.

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A Mobius Strip is a 2 sided three dimensional figure.  To build one you take a strip of paper (with a top and a bottom side), add a single twist, then connect the two ends.  Now, there is no top side or bottom side.  In fact, if you placed an ant (or your finger) upon it, the ant would continue to walk infinitely upon the Mobius Strip because you made it an infinite loop.

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Okay, so why do we care?  I mean, that’s a cool math/science experiment Pastor Fred; and what does that have to do with ‘belief’?  What if, ‘believing’ was not an end goal?  What if ‘believing’ was about the journey of life and us trying to understand God’s work, our part in God’s work, our part in communities, and why us?  What if ‘believing’ was more about wrestling with God, our place in communities, and who we are individually and in relationship with God and communities?  Then perhaps, the Mobius Strip actually is much better to understand the ongoingness of life and ‘belief’!

At just about every service, we recite some kind of ‘creed.’  That word (Creed) comes from the Latin, credo, meaning belief.  And if we look at the creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanaisian) only one section in each can we firmly ground in history or written experience; that of the second article which pertains to a profession of Jesus the Christ.  The other two articles (1st, concerning God the Father; and 3rd, concerning God the Holy Spirit) really invite us beyond ourselves to journey with things we have to take in faith, be willing to trust and wrestle with!  Taking the Apostles’ Creed as an example, the third article reads like this:
                       “I believe in the Holy Spirit,
                                   the holy catholic church,
                                   the communion of saints,
                                   the forgiveness of sins,
                                   the resurrection of the body,
                                   and the life everlasting.”
          

How often do you think about your purpose and place God’s work through the Spirit led holy (universal) church, the saints throughout history, the real forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body at the end of this world as we know it, and ‘life everlasting’?  That’s some hard stuff to discern and grow into over our whole lives!

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The Creeds are there for us as a guide, because we’re all on our journeys of finding our states of believing depending on how we are at that moment when life meets us.  There are days when I am really believing in forgiveness, and there are days when I need God to give me strength.  There are days when I marvel at creation, and there are days when I wonder if God made a mistake with mosquitoes.  There are days when I look at my family and am very thankful that God was one of us because I’m not sure I would be able to fully describe it and realize that Christ lived, died, was risen once again for all people.  So, be willing to lean in and believe with me.  Be willing to lean in and wrestle with me.  And be willing to twist the strip of life with me and find it hard to describe a Mobius Strip.