I was eating lunch the other day with a clergy friend. We had gotten together to talk about belief, and the Church, and our evolving understanding of what Christianity is about and I began to tell my friend about the challenges of growing up in Memphis,Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible belt. I said that even as a child I never really believed in hell and that had led to many difficult conversations with friends at school. I told of other things that people, even in my easy going Episcopal Church, took for granted, things I was not so sure about. I had wondered, for instance, why we worshipped Jesus when he never seemed to want that kind of attention. I told my friend about how for most of my life I had felt I had to be careful about telling people what I really believed, that I was afraid I would get caught believing all the wrong things. I told her also about a recent conversation with my bishop, one in which I told the bishop that I had come to a place in life where I realize I can believe whatever I want and about how freeing that realization is. My friend looked at me and in a very pastoral tone said, “That must have been hard for you all those years keeping that secret. And now you’ve come out to your bishop. That must feel pretty good.” I was grateful for such a caring response from someone who understood what I was saying better than I did.
I am thinking of another time, back in those days of not saying everything I believed. I had somehow ended up as the leader in a small discussion group on a retreat weekend. Eight of us were talking about our understanding of God and our lives and our hopes, that sort of thing. A woman across from me said, kind of sadly, that she had been reading the Bible and her reading had led her to believe that God might let someone go to heaven for a while and then change his mind and send them on to hell. I came out of my chair when she said that. Partly because, as the leader, I was sorry to hear the conversation go that way, but mostly because what she said had offended something deep within me. I crossed to her and looked her in the face and said, no, that couldn’t be the case. God isn’t like that.
Now, I try not to claim to know the mind of God, and I don’t have much use for others who say they know the mind of God. But in that moment, I was up and had spoken before I knew what was happening. It was a visceral response about something I believed so deeply I couldn’t help but respond. I responded as I did also because I hurt for her. It happened in a split second, something, hidden and powerful, and life affirming became real and present in concern for another. That something was a core belief, exposed by her words, and it had to do with the reality of a love that is always better than we expect. That belief was real and compelling in that moment, and it required that I try to share it with her.
I’ve only been saying those words I spoke to the bishop, the ones about believing what I want to, for a short time, maybe for the last year. They still feel right. And, having found those words, I continue to ask myself what it is that I do believe. The best I can tell you today is that it is something like this:
I believe there is a force, a power in the universe that has to do with love. That power has something to do with us, it is present in us and around us and between us. Somehow, it is for us. It becomes tangible in our caring for others and in fleeting moments of perceived connection to something larger, grander and deeper than our day to day experience. Our attempts at community, contemplation and reflection can open us to a sense of its presence.
That sounds pretty close. That feels like solid ground.
When I spoke to my bishop, I think I was still focused on an old list of things I don’t believe. It was as if I was confessing my unbelief, and there was some relief in that. I see now that I was also telling her that I have identified a core of belief that feels right, that rings true for me and within me, and against which all those other ideas, the ones we Christians tend to argue about, the ones I was worried about not believing all those years, must be tested. I have been preaching for years that you don’t have to believe everything the Church teaches, that belief is something you work out over time, in a faith community, and that your belief may not look like what you think the Church expects you to believe. I’ve said all those things. And, as is often the case, I see today that I have been preaching to myself.
