Believing Specifically
Part 1 of series, God in Five Weeks
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
Sept. 17, 2006
Ever heard someone say, “I’m spiritual and everything, I just have a problem with organized religion.” Remember these folks from last week?
So the first woman says if you want to get together and “talk about” your beliefs, you don’t have to do it in a church. Talk about your beliefs? How about learning to live by them? Of course she doesn’t see a need for the church. I mean, if all you do at church is talk about your beliefs, you can do that anywhere, right? Completely missing in action here is the notion that more important than believing something is living what you believe. And forget about the idea that it might be important, or even possible, to make sure you believe something that is actually correct.
The next guy said as long as you believe in karma you’ll be “fine.” What does “fine” mean? And what would “not fine” look like to this person? Again, it comes down to simply believing in something – for this last woman it was a vague set of “beliefs.” For this man it’s “karma,” which is the vague concept that what goes around comes around. Do you think if you were to probe him a little further he would be able to explain to you how karma works, or where he gets his conviction that as long as you believe in it you’ll be fine, or what is going to happen to people who do not believe in it? I doubt it, don’t you?
The third person said you don’t have to go to church to “prove” you believe in God. Is that what church is? The place where we prove to everybody in our lives that we believe in God?
All three of these people mentioned belief as they gave us our opinions. But specifically what do they believe in? Remember, the question simply was, “Do you attend church?” Technically the response is “yes,” or “no.” But we heard more than that, didn’t we? What we heard, folks, and I want to be careful here because I don’t want to brutalize these people who were willing to put their faces on camera so we’d have a clip to show in church, but what we heard was simply vacuous. There was no substance to anything those people said, yet they were telling us things about their own belief system. “I believe people don’t need to go to church to talk about their beliefs.” “I believe as long as you believe in karma, you’re okay.” “I believe you can believe in God but not have to go to church to prove it.”
Wow – we have just learned something about what each of these people believes. And we have seen two things. First is how completely off-base is their understanding of what church is. Second, and key to our discussion today, is that to these people, spirituality is vague – it can’t be pinned down in any way. Going to church pins it down too much. You shouldn’t have to go to church to talk about your beliefs or to prove you believe in God, and if you believe in karma, you don’t NEED to go to church. Apparently church is for all of us non karma-believers. (By the way, karma is a Hindu idea, not a Christian one).
What these people said about their own belief system is the spiritual equivalent of what Rodney King said. Remember Rodney King many years ago? Remember what he said after the furor surrounding his beating by the LA police? “Can’t we all just get along?” Let’s look at that for a minute. That is a statement that makes Rodney King sound like a really sweet, agreeable, nice guy. But of course it doesn’t mean anything because there is a correct answer to that question, and it is, “No! Of course we can’t get along – that’s why some cops beat the daylights out of you when you wouldn’t do what they asked. In fact, that’s why there are cops in the first place, because we can’t all just get along.”
It’s easy to say, “Can’t we all just get along.” It’s much harder to ask one’s self why one cannot get along with others. It’s easy to say, “If people believe in karma they’ll be fine.” It’s much harder to say, “What is karma, and how will karma make sure that I’m fine in the end, and what will be the destiny of those who are NOT fine?” It’s easy to say, “You don’t have to go to church to prove you believe in God or talk about your beliefs.” It’s a lot harder to say, “Perhaps I have nothing to prove, but much to become. Little to say, but much to learn. How are my beliefs helping me learn and become what I need to learn and become?”
The problem in our society is that we believe that spirituality is about what we believe. But spirituality isn’t about what we believe. Spirituality is about how we live. American spirituality could be summarized in a few simple statements:
1. As long as you “believe” such and such, you’re okay (usually “such and such” is whatever you choose to believe and are sincere about).
2. You don’t need any authority (like the church) telling you what to believe.
3. This is because you are truth onto yourself. Decide what is true for you and then believe it.
These three statements are the essence of spirituality in America. If someone says to you, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual,” or “I don’t believe you need the church in order to be spiritual,” I assure you they almost definitely have embraced these three statements.
Now there are two big problems with these statements. The first is that each statement, on its own, is demonstrably untrue, and even actually a little dangerous. The second is that the three statements together lead us to a more profound untruth, which is that spirituality concerns what you believe. That also is false, as I have just told you that spirituality concerns not principally what you believe but how you live. Allow me to illustrate. See how these statements grab you.
How would you feel about a man who says he loves humanity but seems not to love those around him?
How would you feel about a woman who says she believes in love while refusing to learn to love her own husband.
How would you feel about a man who says he believes in generosity, yet is personally very stingy.
How would you feel about a woman who says she believes in the power of prayer, yet only prays infrequently.
How would you feel about a man who says he believes that relationships are essential for growth in the Christian life, yet will not allow anyone to get close to him?
I could go on and on and list ten thousand other things, but you get the point. Let’s look at why these situations I mentioned seem so obviously messed up. These situations are messed up because the general must follow logically from the specific. Does that sound complex? It’s not. Generosity is a virtue – an idea of a lifestyle rooted in consistent giving – it’s a general principle that describes a way of specifically living in the real world. Generosity is general. But when you are generous, you are generous to specific people and if you are not generous to specific people, you are not generous at all. That’s why you can’t accurately make the general comment that you believe in the principle of generosity if you’re not giving consistently. Same thing with love. Love for humanity is a general principle that describes a lifestyle of loving individual human beings specifically. If you do not love specific human beings in your life, then you cannot love all of humanity generally. Spirituality ultimately is not about believing, it’s about living. What we believe, or say we believe, ultimately matters very little. Far more important is whether our belief ultimately comes down into the form of concrete actions.
Now here’s where we start getting down to brass tacks. Concrete actions cannot consistently come from vague beliefs. Let me say that again. Concrete actions cannot consistently come from vague beliefs. If your beliefs are not specific enough to lead to concrete actions, then they are of little value. So for the person who says, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious,” you might ask, “And how do your deep convictions about spirituality affect your actions, choices, and behaviors?” Chances are extremely good that the answer will be something vague. “I try to be a good person,” or “I think you have to try to make the world a better place,” or “I try to love and respect people.” Vague beliefs lead to vague behaviors, and it couldn’t be any other way.
Today is an introduction to a series I’m facetiously calling God In Four Weeks, and it’s a series about the Trinity. The Trinity is our name for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But before launching into this series, I wanted to make sure you understand why it’s important. It’s important because our beliefs must be specific enough to lead to concrete action. The Christian understanding of the Trinity is essential because it expresses specifically what we believe about God – both who God is, and how he functions. It allows us to relate to God with a foundation of some kind. When you first meet someone, you are extra careful about what you say around them. You avoid certain kinds of jokes, you’re a little more stiff around them, because you don’t know exactly who you are speaking to. As you get to know them better, you can unwind a little bit and be more fully yourself. Relationship with someone is only possible if you can come to know specific things about them, and vice versa. So we cannot have a relationship with God if we are not willing to take the leap of declaring that we believe specific things about who God is. God is not simply a higher power. God is not the man upstairs. God is not a cosmic Santa Claus. God is not karma. God is not Allah (thank God we’re not broadcasting to much of the Muslim world right now because that statement would get me killed). God is not Hari Krishna. God is not some vague life-force or genie. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I think you will be encouraged and astonished in the coming weeks when you find out exactly what that means and why it’s important.
Let’s continue to lay our foundation for this series this morning by turning to God’s Word. Would you please turn with me to Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. Let’s read together the first five words of this verse, read with me:
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God created…”
Let’s read those words one more time:
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God created...”
The Hebrew/Christian God is understood as being active in history right from the start. We were speaking earlier of vague ideas about God. Isn’t interesting, if you look into verse 2, it says, “the earth was formless and void.” In other words, God was clear, specific, present, ready to act in creation, existing in a specific way taking specific action. It was not God who was unspecific, but it was rather our world – the world we live in – that was vague, formless, without shape, unclear. God simply WAS, and IS. If we miss this understanding of God in the first two verses of Genesis, we have simply missed the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. God is active. God is a specific being that brings shape and form and specificity and meaning to the earth and those who live on it. Genesis starts right out conveying to us the message that God takes random and vague things and brings order to them and makes them capable of being understood. We see God then creating animals and plants that can live in the world he had made, and finally God creating man and woman with minds and spirits capable of understanding mathematics, the ultimate organizing, clarity-bringing force in the universe – the thing that allows us to understand solar systems billions of light years away. If you believe in a creator-God, you believe in a God who is specific enough to create calculus and trigonometry and physics. Our mathematicians, after all, didn’t create these principles, they merely discovered them. You also believe in the God who created logic. God is specific, and his work in creation is specific.
Eugene Peterson has brilliantly observed that while other ancient cultures were coming up with fantasies and fairy tales about gods and goddesses, and half-man/half-gods, the Hebrew culture began with the assumption that God was at work among human beings. Their account of God begins with “in the beginning God created,” and goes on to detail God’s creation of earth, animals, and human beings, acting in specific personal relationship to humans right from the start. In the Old Testament, God is assumed to be everywhere and behind everything. But unlike pantheism – the Hindu notion that God is everything and everything is God – that God is an impersonal “life force,” – the Old Testament has God interacting on a very specific and personal level with human beings, sometimes using specific objects. Moses encounters God in a burning bush. God led the Hebrews through the desert wilderness appearing as a cloud by day and fire at night. The Hebrews understood God as intimately connected with the gritty realities of daily life in their time. Romance, kingdom-building, temple construction, warfare, sex, politics, farming – everything began and ended with God. They didn’t bother trying to figure out where God fit into their world – they were too busy trying to understand where they fit into His.
Psalms 8:1-9 (NIV)
1 O LORD , our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:
7 all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The question for them was, “Where do human beings belong in a world created by, and belonging to, God?” Why was this the key question for them? Because romance, kingdom-building, temple construction, warfare, sex, politics, farming – everything began and ended with God. In the beginning God… The Hebrews were not at all interested in beliefs. They were interested in connecting and intersecting and interacting with a specific living being who had a personality, who demanded things from them, and who they ignored at great peril. Their beliefs did nothing more than guide them along specific paths on the journey to connect, intersect, and interact with the specific God they believed in – a God they believed had created history and then entered it again and again, and who guided and shaped it moment by moment.
So we arrive, once again, at Trinity. Trinity is a set of beliefs that will guide us along specific paths on our journey to connect, intersect, and interact with the specific God we believe in. A God we also believe has created history and then entered it again and again, and who we still believe guides and shapes it moment by moment. Understanding Trinity helps us understand God – at least enough to believe it’s possible to know him. Understanding Trinity gives us respect for who God is, what he has done, and what he continues to do. Understanding Trinity gets us away from the false idea that spirituality is about what we believe and not about how we live. Understanding Trinity builds a foundation of belief that is specific enough to result in specific changes in our lives. Please turn to Exodus 32:1-4 as we close this morning. Here’s why doctrine, why specific belief, matters so much.
Exodus 32:1-4 (NIV)
1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him."
2 Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me."
3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.
4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
Specific beliefs about God matter because we are all still just like this today. We are a hairs-breadth away from building a golden calf in our own lives – worshipping whatever is around us that we decide to attribute value to. Deciding that God doesn’t meet our expectations, so we’ll just erect a God of our own. Maybe karma. Maybe being a good person. Maybe believing in ourselves. Trinity roots us not in who we would like God to be, but in who He is. Many people will say it doesn’t matter specifically what you believe about God. I say it’s the only thing that really matters. Next week we’ll deal a little bit with the mystery of the Trinity before going on to talk about God the Father.
