"When we jump, we begin to see the need for springs. The springs help make sense of these deeper realities that drive how we live every day. The springs aren't God. The springs aren't Jesus. The springs are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depth that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of the Christian faith.
They aren't the point.
They help us understand the point, but they are a means and not an end. We take them seriously, and at the same time we keep them in proper perspective. . .
It hit me while I was watching that for him (a man giving a lecture on the six-day literal creation) faith isn't a trampoline; it's a wall of bricks. Each of the core doctrines for him is like an individual brick that stacks on top of the others. If you pull one out, the whole wall starts to crumble. It appears quite strong and rigid, but if you begin to rethink or discuss even one brick, the whole thing is in danger . . .
One of the thing that happens in brickworld: you spend a lot of time talking about how right you are. Which of course leads to how wrong everybody else is. Which then leads to defending the wall. It struck me . . .is that you rarely defend a trampoline. You invite people to jump on it with you.
I am far more interested in jumping that I am in arguing about whose trampoline is better. You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoy them and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you.
Jesus invites everybody to jump..
And saying yes to the invitation doesn't mean we have to have it all figure out. This is an important thing to remember: I can jump and still have questions and doubts. I often meet people who are waiting to follow God until they have all their questions answered. They will be waiting for a long time, because if we knew everything, we'd be . . . God. So in the invitation to jump is an invitation to follow Jesus with all of our doubts and questions right there with us. "
rob bell, velvet elvis, pgs. 22-28
Take that "statement of faith"
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I'm with you on the spirit of this. I once used this illustration in a sermon at my old church and an elder got in my face afterwards about how we need the "bricks" and to not live so recklessly. He was kind of a jerk anyway, so I liked making him mad. I had a period where I was all about throwing all that away. Shaking the proverbial etch-a-sketch and relying entirely on the Spirit. I saw every statement of faith, doctrinal statement, creed, and set of rules as a way of shoring up their own particular belief system. It seems to be based on fear and stifled the Spirit.
ReplyDeleteThough I have to say that after studying Church history in seminary, I'm struck with my arrogance. I've been acting as if I was the first person in history to experience Christ or deal with these issues. I feel a lot smaller now. A statement of faith can be important because God is not just a God of the individual. He is constantly moving, working, and teaching soooooo many people all the time. So just because God revealed a truth to someone else who put it in their statement of faith and didn't reveal it to me, it doesn't make it wrong. The church started trying to figure out what faith in Christ REALLY looked like right out of the gate because, as much as I hate to say it, not everyone is right. The Gnostics, Arians, and Pelagians all MEANT well. They thought that they were following Christ, but they weren't. It's hard to say in this post-modern culture, but truth exists and not everyone has it. Though I wanna say right now that no one is EVER going to get to it. Anyone who puts a period at the end of their statement of faith and claims to truly know God doesn't quite understand how MASSIVE God is.
Anyways, I'm not as willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater anymore. I see myself as a part of something that is WAY bigger than I am. In my humility and smallness, I want to join in the centuries-old discussion about just who this God is and not ignore thousands of years of sincere Christians thinking that Jesus and I can figure this out in my short life-span.