One metaphor - among many possible ones - that may be used to describe my faith journey is that of a pilgrimage. One day I will die, and I will have done something with the days between my birth and death. What path will I have walked? No one can walk it for me. Will I have gone somewhere that mattered, seen and done things that mattered? What guidance is there for this journey? I hope that describing my journey will help you on yours.
On my journey I have discovered some things, become convinced of some things, and they guide my steps. I am convinced that God is real. I am convinced that he created the world and us in it. Therefore, we are not an accident and there is real purpose and meaning beyond what we would just make up for ourselves. In other words, there is a real destination in this journey, and I am not left to walking aimlessly. While I stop and enjoy the sights and sounds and smells of real life, I can do that just as well and meaningfully while I am actually on my way somewhere.
The ultimate destination is heaven and it also is not heaven. The ultimate destination in life is God himself, which is the real reason for wanting to get to heaven. He is both our companion on our journey, the one who sets and guides our steps, and he is the destination. The question is often asked, which is more important - the journey or the destination? I think, in life, this is a false dichotomy because at the heart of all reality is knowing, loving, and therefore glorifying God, and the journey and destination are both shaped by this. God is both the means and the end of all things. We get to know him progressively, and in his wisdom he has chosen for us to know him now in part, to learn to trust him on this journey, and eventually to dwell with him and enjoy him in far greater measure in his New Creation forever.
Who is God? Such a big question. In humility we realize that even if we are able to say true things about him, our minds are so finite and may only scratch the surface of this question. Though we may be able to say some true things - and that is better than saying nothing at all - we yet realize that this is a question we may never exhaust, even if we have forever to try.
Who is God? I give the Christian answer of which I have become convinced. It is also with humility that we recognize that we are not the first people to ask and answer these questions with wisdom, and so I turn to the Westminster Shorter Catechism for help with the answer. "Question 4: What is God? Answer: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being,
wisdom, power, holiness,
justice, goodness, and truth." All that is good flows from God and is an expression of an attribute that he already holds in perfect fullness. God alone holds them all in perfect balance so that in his justice he is loving, in his eternality he is fully present, in his grace he is truthful.
Technically I have just answered the question, "What is God?" and the prior question, "Who is God?" presupposes some things and leads us into deep Christian mystery. God, as he reveals himself in his Word, is a person, a "who" and not an "it". We are told that humans were created in his image, which means that in some important ways we are like him, even if he is on a whole other level. God has thoughts, feelings, and a will. He is a rational, moral, intelligent being. He makes plans and he enters into relationship with other persons. God, though deeply mysterious, is much more like another person than he is like some invisible cosmic soup or like the Force from Star Wars. (In some ways we might prefer a cosmic soup because that makes God impersonal and robotic, and we wouldn't worry much about offending a robot, but I for sure worry about doing things to offend my wife - another person that I am in relationship with and to whom I am accountable.)
But the mystery only begins there. God also reveals himself as three-in-one. We use the word Trinity to describe this mystery. The Trinity is a doctrine that seeks to sum up these revealed realities, upholding each without denying any of them: 1. There is one God. There is no one like God. 2. The Father is God. 3. The Son is God. This is Jesus. 4. The Holy Spirit is God. 5. The Father is not the Son. 6. The Father is not the Spirit. 7. The Son is not the Spirit. This is enough to explode our heads.
The Nicene Creed is an orthodox consensus historically, and from the earliest expressions of Christianity we see a grappling with this mystery.
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
There is more to deal with in the creed than I have gotten to yet, but before we move on, what practical effect does it have on our belief that God is a Trinity instead of just one person alone? Before anything else existed, God existed. There was nothing outside of himself to which he had to conform because everything that is not God was brought into existence by God. All notions of justice, love, mercy, gravity, beauty come from God himself. So before he created the world, was God bored and lonely? No! God, from eternity past, has been in relationship with himself. The love that we feel for each other is a shadow and an echo of the great, unsearchable, infinite, boundless love that the persons of the Trinity have had for each other from before time began. The doctrine of the Trinity means that love is at the heart of reality. Love has always existed. The story of our world is a story of created people being drawn into an eternal love story. God was not lonely. God was not needy. God does not depend on us. But he loves us. The doctrine of the Trinity has massive implications for the purpose of our world and our own individual lives.
So God chose to create man. But man, when given the choice, chose rebellion. We did not want God to run our lives. We wanted to run our lives. We did not want to be told what to do, what to think, how to live. The tragic irony is that God loves us, is wise, and always gives us what is best for us. But we rebel anyway, thinking we know better.
The Bible describes sin as a falling short of the glory of God. God is glorious. He is worthy. He is holy, holy, holy. He is absolute, in control, Creator. All things were made by him and for him. Things work right when they are giving him the glory. Sin is a declaring, knowingly or unknowingly, that God is not all-glorious, that he is not really good or satisfying or ultimate.
Sin also is not just a bad mark or a tally in the wrong category. Sin is a hurt against another person because God is a person. It is possible for us to grieve the Spirit. What are the consequences of sin? The first and worst is that our fellowship with God is broken. Sin is bad because everything is about knowing and loving God, and sin takes us away from that. The second is that sin requires a punishment. We have broken the moral law. The third is the subjection of creation to futility. Everything now groans as if broken. Death has entered the world, and things decay. People get cancer. Earthquakes happen. Our world needs to be fixed.
What sin does is put us in the position of needing a Savior. The Old Testament is the story of God providing hope for a Savior, prophesying his coming, calling and leading a wayward people through whom the Savior would come. The New Testament is the completion of the story in which Jesus comes. Jesus is God incarnate, the eternal Son become man - fully God and fully man. Jesus has a brilliant but short career as a teacher, preacher, prophet, and healer because ultimately all those roles were subordinate to his ultimate purpose. Jesus came to die for the forgiveness of sins. Again from the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe that in Jesus forgiveness of sins is possible. More than that, I believe that the good news is not simply that I am forgiven but that I am restored to relationship with God, that I am adopted in the family of God, that my destination is restored, that I have purpose, that God walks with me on this journey, that he is restoring this broken world, that I get to be a part of that, that eventually we will have a new creation that no longer buckles under the burdens of death and decay. Anyone may believe in Jesus and receive this. No matter how horrible your sins, you may be forgiven. We must simply repent and believe. This is grace. It is free. Jesus, on the cross, became and took your sin, swallowing the cup of wrath that you and I deserved so that we wouldn't have to. He allowed his fellowship with the Father to be broken so that we might enter into it. Our debt has been paid and erased. That is the Good News.
I have attempted to sketch out a brief roadmap of historic Christianity, perhaps emphasizing some things that have seemed especially important to me lately. I could have turned - and maybe should have turned - each of those paragraphs, or even each of those sentences, into its own blog entry. There is so much here to explore, so many stones unturned. The length of this forces me into multiple entries. Oh well.
I write with pilgrims in mind - questioning and probing pilgrims. My next entry will deal with why I believe and what my story basically is. So it will be more autobiographical. Finally, I plan a third entry detailing different resources and ideas that I think would be helpful for someone wanting to learn more about Christianity.
Thank you for your time and consideration! May God bless you.
