I want to share just a bit about Christian creeds. At the end of this article, I will invite you to reflect upon your core beliefs.
I know, a creed sounds boring, but I hope you will
bear with me for just a moment.
“And I believe that what I believe
Is what makes me what I am
I did not make it, no it is making
me
It is the very truth of God and
not
the invention of any man.” - Rich
Mullins
Rich Mullins, who was a Christian songwriter before his
untimely death, penned these words for a contemporary song he wrote. He grew to
appreciate the classic creeds of the church.
Besides, in
a book making the rounds in many United Methodist churches, Deepening Your Effectiveness, by Dan
Glover and Claudia Lavy, the encouragement is that the congregation develop
classes around their core beliefs as part of their “discipleship pathway.”
In a recent interview, the Yale
scholar Jaroslave Pelikan contrasted contemporary attempts to make new creeds
with what he describes as the language of love. The ancient creed is a way of
saying simply, when all other words fail, “I love you.” Some contemporary
creeds succeed in this effort, but many fail to say the faith in a way that
unites the world church. For Pelikan, one contemporary creed, written in 1960
by the Masai people in Africa , fully expresses
the language of love. It bears the obvious marks of its own culture, yet speaks
of the faith held in common by all:
We believe that God made good his
promise by sending his Son, Jesus Christ ,
a man in the flesh, a Jew by
tribe,
born poor in a little village,
who left his home and was always
on safari doing good,
curing people by the power of God,
teaching about God and man,
showing that the meaning of
religion
is love.
He was rejected by his people,
tortured and nailed hands and feet
to a cross, and died.
He was buried in the grave,
but the hyenas did not touch him,
and on the third day, he rose from
that grave.
He ascended to the skies. He is
the Lord.
With its
striking folk images, the Masai Creed confesses the faith in a particular and
very personal language of love. Clearly, it does not speak the same thing as
the Apostles’ Creed but it does say the same thing.
To relate
this to our post-modern setting, the creed admittedly moves against the
segmentation and focus on the contemporary that seems so much part of this time
in history. Yet, according to one post-modern Christian web site:
In postmodernity, creeds are making a comeback,
primarily because we see that everybody has a creed, even those who have said
for years, “We have no creed.” We postmoderns are rediscovering our Christian
heritage, preferring to be connected to a larger entity than just our recent
era. While for years, modernists, especially “liberal” modernists, told us to
forget about the ancient creeds and just “believe what you want.” Many
postmoderns are rejecting the creed of “believe what you want” and discovering
the ancient creeds, which are worded in such a way to allow real freedom of
belief on side issues, yet still connect us to present and past believers.[1]
In his recent book, Creed: What Christians Believe and Why itMatters, Luke Timothy Johnson points out that the root of forming creeds is
Judaism found in Deuteronomy 6:4: (“Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one
LORD. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your
soul and all your might.”) This is known in Judaism as the Shema from the word,
Hear. What is important about this statement is that it describes a common
belief about God and a personal response, so the creed here is both communal
(our God) and personal (love the Lord, your God).
Though
Christian confessional statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the original
Shema, there is one obvious alteration. The earliest Christians altered their
story of God’s way in the world in light of their personal experience of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ .
Creeds are
important not just because they articulate our personal experience of the risen
Christ, but they also serve to unite
the church. When so much else divides the global church and the local church,
the story held in common by all Christians and expressed in the creed, brings
us together. Christians can and do disagree on any number of issues that are
rocking the world, but still maintain unity through a common confession of
faith.
The creeds
also protect believers from the tendency toward radical individualism or simply inventing our own faith.
Anything we
created would not contain God. The creed does not contain God. Yet, they do
point the way. Experienced in this way, creeds, like stories, open up a new
world of faithful exploration. Once we accept the truthfulness of what they are
expressing, that can shape our lives in the way Rich Mullins
Finally, William Sloane Coffin Coffin says it is something we must give
our hearts to, our lives to.
Many young people today want the
church to be honest with them. What do you believe? What defines you as a
Christian community? In fact, many persons today want to connect with something
larger than what they could create. They want to be part of something huge. The
creeds remind us that we are part of a global Christian community that has
existed for almost 2000 years. We live into the creed, and as we do so, we let
it define us.
People often misunderstand the
nature of the creeds in the New Testament and in church history. Creeds are one
attempt that Christian leaders take throughout history to identify what is
essential. The creed is a guide for a reading of the Bible that accords with
the experience of God in Jesus Christ. A creed asks individuals to make a
collective commitment to a set of convictions and to each other. In a culture
that rightly values individuality, the creed reminds us of community. In a
culture that rightly rewards novelty and creativity, creeds use ancient and
traditional language. As our modern culture rightly looks to the future to be
better than today, the creed invites us to look to the past for wisdom and
guidance. When modern society throws away things so easily, the church invites
us to ponder the continuing significance of words and thoughts that have lasted
for centuries.
Imagine that you had to write a
letter to your family for some reason that summed up your perception of what
you are all about. “This is what I am about, this is what I believe, this is
what I have given my heart to.”
Even though I have not done this
(yet), I had a visit from one of my sisters some years ago. She started talking
with my sons about what I was like back then, when we lived in the same home.
Of course, all of this could have gone quite badly. However, her response was
something like the following. George is a lot today as he was then. He stood by
and with the church then, and he still does today. I find much true in that
statement. Regardless of other changes that have been obvious in my life, some
things have remained constant. Such a constant has been the importance of a
community to which I belong and with which I share common core beliefs.
[1] —David Bennett October 15, 2004 .
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