On Believing: Final Thoughts

The Treehouse: Conversations About God

In the previous Treehouse post “Leaning Into Hope” I wrote, “When we began this journey over a year-and-a-half ago, I invited you to join me as I try to rediscover and articulate what I believe about God, Jesus, the Church, Christian faith, and so on.”

Honestly, I hardly know how to begin these days, but it feels more urgent than ever to put forth as clearly as possible a vision of love, grace, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, hope, welcome, wideness, a vision of fierce justice, abiding wonder, unfettered curiosity, and holy uncertainty that can not only stand against the twisted version of Christianity currently being peddled¹ by far too many, but that can begin to render it obsolete. ²

So let’s get right into it.

My starting point is that there is a God or a Someone or a Something, because I have to start somewhere. I tried atheism, but I was no good at it, so I’m back, or actually forward, with this simple foundation that I hope is flexible enough to build and expand on (just like a really fantastic treehouse would be), because I don’t know that I’m ever going to be done wondering and doubting and reframing and reclaiming. And I’m finally at peace with that.

So, for me, today, God is. Of course, the next question ought to be, “What kind of God?”

I keep thinking of the first of the two Creation Stories in Genesis, when the Spirit, the Breath of God was hovering, brooding, over the surface of the waters.

Then God speaks. From the beginning, creative power emanates through Divine’s word and thought. There is nurturing power in Their attentive hovering. Add that to humankind being created “in our image,” and I’m unable to escape the deeply relational and even interdependent nature of the Divine.

The center of all this relatedness, the nucleus that holds all in its dynamic, is Love. Love as the initiating impulse of Creation, Love as the sustaining activity of tending and mending Creation, Love as the evolutionary direction forward for Creation.³

There is nothing that will cost you more than the full-on risk of Love. Therefore, God’s creative power is unavoidably interwoven with Their naked vulnerability. This theme is borne out in cycles in the Old Testament when God sounds like They’re lamenting in a Country Western song — “You’ve done me wrong, I wish I could quit loving you, but I just can’t.”

Enter Jesus, who opts for well-known words from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read from to announce the beginning of his work in the world:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”⁴

He concludes with “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, Jesus comes on the scene as literally embodying the promises of God as announced by Isaiah and other prophets. (I do love Luke’s dramatic touch of Jesus rolling up the scroll, giving it back to the attendant, and sitting down. “And….scene.”)

What is enormously significant to note is the fact that Jesus’s proclamation immediately follows his experience in the wilderness where he was offered⁵ ultimate power, an offer he rejects in favor of continuing to announce the incoming kingdom/reign/new reality of God. Here’s the thing. Power does not like to be challenged. It pushes back, and hard. Yet Jesus never yielded, teaching and healing and gathering all manner of people around him, ignoring the accusations and aggression coming from all sides, continually walking straight into the fray. (Vulnerability: check.)

In my mind, the coming of Jesus and his brief ministry is like watching walls being knocked down and gates being blown wide open. One of my former pastors flipped the old script for me in such a beautiful way. “What if, instead of imagining that heaven is a place you have to get into, we imagine heaven as something that gets out, that right now is beginning to flow all around us, that we are ankle-deep in it already.” That the kingdom/reign/new reality of God is already here and is beginning to work its way into and altering the very fabric of the world. Jesus’s teachings about forgiveness offer a way forward out of the brokenness that is so often part of the human condition.

We could say, “If you want to know what God is like, watch what Jesus does.”

But here is the truth. I’m starting to feel like theology might be like a really good joke — the more you pick it apart, the more you kill it.

Karl Barth, ⁶the noted Swiss Reformed theologian who wrote heaps of books on Christian theology was asked by a student during a lecture series at the University of Chicago if he could sum up all of his writings. Barth’s response? The song his mother had taught him at her knee. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” (This story makes me wonder if I’m making this whole enterprise harder than it needs to be.)

We know from the ancient historian Josephus that Jesus actually was crucified by the Romans. Do I believe he was resurrected? In truth, I’m not sure I do, not in the sense of the Biblical stories of being raised from the dead and hanging out with his disciples and eating grilled fish. At the same time, Jesus has twice appeared to me in dreams in powerful, necessary, healing ways, leaving me stunned and weeping. Jesus showed up in the suffering children when I served as a chaplain at the Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. And once, very early on an Easter morning, I woke in my darkened room to the distinctly spicy perfume of lilies, and as I lay in my bed, barely daring to move, I breathed in the scent until the sun was well in the sky. Jesus is still who I turn to in hope, because in him I sense a friendship, even kinship. So maybe I’m just splitting dimensional hairs here.

Do I follow Jesus? Yes. I try to.

I try to follow Jesus’s ways. I try to keep in mind every single one of us contains divinity. I try to keep in mind we are all made of the same wondrous stardust. I try to remember the poor with my money and prayers. I try to remember how many suffer with loneliness and despair and tragically difficult lives and to hold hope for us all through the promise of Love, that it might keep stirring us to be Love and to act with Love and to embody Love, to show up for each other, either as hands and feet of Jesus or whatever divine name we want to give it. I try to remember to receive Love when it comes my way and to acknowledge and name and offer gratitude for grace when it falls over me.

The third and final movement that I make in building this thing I’m trying to embrace with really open and flexible arms is the inbreaking Spirit (breath, wind, pneuma) that arrives (Acts 2) to stir the followers of Jesus into action, that action being to point to and emulate Jesus in living out God’s kingdom/reign/new reality and bringing it to fruition wherever and however and whenever we can, and to knit us in a loving community that encourages one another in the faithful lives we’re trying to live by moving in and through and among us. Is the Spirit still active in the world today? I believe yes, undoubtedly. So many congregations and Christians and Christian leaders are doing so much good in their communities. So many who are part of other faith traditions as well as those who don’t identify with any faith tradition are stirred to profound, world-changing acts of lovingkindness and courage. I try to keep all this in mind when things in our country and the world feel overwhelming and discouraging. The Spirit of Love is still moving, maybe more powerfully than ever.

Am I a universalist? I am. I believe the true scandal is that Love wins everything, all is redeemed, and everyone is in. I cannot believe the wasted and too often spiritually violent energy spent by Christians trying to determine who is out and who is in. Number one, not our call. Number two, grow up. Number three, what difference does it make? Is our mission as humans to police the kingdom/reign/new reality of God, to literally gatekeep Love? I assure you, it is not. I think of Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard who came at various times in the day, some right before quitting time, and all were paid the same as the workers who labored all day. When they complained bitterly (“Waaahhhh, it’s not fair…”) the landowner (hint, hint, God) challenges them with “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I’m generous?”⁷

Today this is what I can say about what I believe, while fully admitting there is so much more I don’t know than I do, and I am fine with that. (That’s why the descriptor of agnostic lingers.) What I’m opening more and more to is exploring and experiencing the neglected, mystical side of this story, leaning into uncertainty and learning to hold it honestly and forthrightly, willing to see there is more unexpected reality to be revealed.

I thank you for coming along on this journey of raggedy, messy faith-ing. I hope it’s been helpful, maybe even clarifying for you from time to time. I find even when I disagree with someone, it helps me better understand what I think and believe.

The Treehouse is as complete as it’s going to be. I’m sure there will be repairs and updates, but I’ll take care of those quietly, as I’m able to get to them. Before you go, be sure to sit and relax for a while, take in the view, the leaves turning, the sun slanting, and have some tea or a glass of wine. Savor the moment.

But…I don’t think the conversation is over, at least it’s not for me. So look for a new section, coming soon.

Please know I wish you deepest blessings on all of your spiritual journeying. May the roads be as adventurous, wide-open, wondrous, challenging, surprising, and mystical as possible.

With love and so much gratitude,

Your fellow traveler, Rebecca

1. Let’s just be honest. Christian Nationalism is not Christianity, because it is most certainly not Jesus of Nazareth who is being followed. It is not the risen Christ who is at the head, leading. It’s a power-drunk political movement, and its proponents have discovered saying “God” and “Jesus” is somehow enough to manipulate people into joining them in their practice of idolatry. It’s more aptly called Nationalized Christianity, an anathema, and it deserves to be soundly rejected.

2. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

3. Check out the French paleontologist and Jesuit priest Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s often mystical ponderings on cosmos and evolution. Truly yummy stuff.

4. We are given this roadmap. This is what God’s kingdom/reign/new reality looks like. (from Luke:4)

5. Satan, or the Evil One, or the Liar or the powers of darkness or maybe even a voice inside. In any event, we are meant to understand the temptation as existential and real, and the rejection of it as world-changing.

6. Check out the Barmen Declaration and the Confessing Church. Barth lived what he believed in challenging times, as are many others today, like Dr. William J. Barber II.

7. Matthew 20:15