Acts 15

Sean Dean

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By Stacy Stevens (stacyoftacoma@gmail.com)

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Since I first stepped foot into a church, almost ten years ago, I have been taught that believing the right things mattered the most.  Sure, it is honorable to feed the poor, visit the prisoners and all the rest, because, of course, faith without works is dead.  But more emphasis was laid on the principal that good deeds did not get you into heaven, but faith in Christ did, and faith boiled down to believing the right things.  Say the sinner’s pray, get ‘saved,’ get baptized, and try not to drink, smoke, have sex or engage in any other forms of worldly fun.

That form of believing in Jesus worked well for me, until I watched a beautiful and traumatic documentary on the issue of human trafficking.*  I read the English subtitles along the bottom of the screen as a young girl told her story.  Stolen from her parents, she lived in the same windowless room for most her life, where she had had sex with over 6000 men.  My old set of ‘Christian’ beliefs wanted me to accept that she would suffer eternity in hell for what she had done, but I couldn’t even accept the hell she was enduring in her life on earth. That belief did not match the God I had learned about in the Bible or the God whose spirit I had come to know in the past several years.

Not only did I begin to question how God chooses who goes to heaven or hell, but I began to question the existence of hell altogether.  At first, it was a very frustrating journey.  The bible study I attended made weekly   reminders of the eternal consequences that some would find themselves in after turning from God.  It would make me so furious.  “What about that girl?” I would think.  “Did she turn from God?” If I was in her situation and    someone told me there was a God who loved me deeply, why would I ever believe that?

Finally peace began to return through exposure to pioneering writers, thinkers, theologians, and ordinary radicals for Jesus.**  They are men and women, leading the emerging church to see Christianity through fresh eyes. Historical author, Karen Armstrong, is one of these. As a historian, she doesn’t come up with new ideas, but brings us back to the old ones.  Here is what she found out about the meaning of “belief” in the history of the church:

The word “belief” itself originally meant to love, to prize, to hold dear. In the 17th century, it narrowed its focus… to mean an intellectual assent to a set of propositions, a credo. “I believe…” it did not mean, “I      accept certain creedal articles of faith.” It meant “I commit myself. I engage myself.”***

Hearing those words validated in me something I had suspected for a long time; she was able to articulate what I could not. Belief isn’t saying the sinner’s prayer, it isn’t using Jesus’ name to justify political or social views, and it isn’t having the right doctrine or belonging to the right denomination.  Belief is knowing God: not in the head, but in the heart, and in the spirit.  And God is love, and we know him through the act of love.  It’s taking the log out of our eye, it’s laying down our life for our friends, it’s action, it’s doing. It’s not “accepting certain creedal articles of faith.”  To believe in God is to love.

*The documentary is called “Call and Response.” Look on callandresponse.com.

**My favorites so far: Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Peter Rollins, and Shane Claiborne. Each of them has several books, video clips, lectures, and other exciting resources to check out. Contact me for my personal recommendations of what to check out.

***This excerpt is from her Ted Talks: www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_lets_revive_the_golden_rule.html

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