A Reason to Believe

           Belief is popular right now.  I know it is early to talk about Christmas but it seems that Christmas is the season for believing.  Macy’s had a promotional campaign two years ago.  “Believe,” was emblazoned on their storefront in New York during the Thanksgiving Parade.  What were they asking us to believe?

           Last Christmas, Sears borrowed the idea and promised that they were a store that “gives you something to believe in,” (like great products at a great price!) – Oh, brother!  Coca-Cola advertises on their December billboards – Believe – accompanied by cola-drinking polar bears.

          The popular animated film, “Polar Express,” loosely based on Chris van Allsburg’s wonderful children’s book, takes up the theme of belief, as if it is enough simply to believe in belief, itself, whatever that means.

          For you skeptics out there, I guarantee that even the most cynical person believes in something.  Even atheists believe.  They believe in knowledge, or science, or reason, or . . . something.  I love science, especially the way scientists are always discovering new things that make the old things they used to believe no longer valid.  Recent discoveries about dark matter, string theory, and the possibility of almost infinite parallel universes have caused astronomers and physicists to scrap old theories and come up with new ones.  Hmmm, I guess we’re supposed to take the new theories on faith.  Ooops!  Did I really use that word?  Does that mean that even the scientific method depends on belief of some sort?  I believe it does.

          Anyway, belief is essential to being human.  And everyone wants you to believe their version of truth.  In a sense, everyone is an evangelist.  I met a small-business owner who is a true-believer in American capitalism, and he has an evangelist’s fervor when talking about our land of opportunity.  I know a foodie who believes that being a vegetarian is the only way to live, food wise, and she speaks with evangelical zeal as she tries to make converts of her friends and acquaintances. 

          Belief gives passion to our living.  But passion can also spill over into fanaticism.  And even hatred.  If you don’t believe like I believe then there must be something wrong with you.  And since I don’t agree with that last sentence, then that must mean there is something wrong with me.  Oh my, my.  Belief is essential to being human, yet belief also can contribute to our problems with each other.   Rodney King’s famous quote, “Why can’t we all just get along?” can be answered with, “Because we believe different things.”

          I hope I have your attention.  Belief can unite us.  Belief can divide us.  As a Christian, Methodist, and ordained minister, you may assume I have beliefs that are important to me.  Indeed.  But I also believe that what is essential to believe is that God formed us to be reconciled – that is, to be in relationship, in peace and harmony, with God and one another - maybe not always in agreement, but always in the spirit of reconciliation. 

          If that sounds like an impossibility, then I hope you will stay tuned.  I have more to say about this soon, if you are interested.  I want to give you a reason to believe.

         

Avoiding Consumption

Jesus prays that his disciples might be one so that the world might believe (John 17:21).  I suspect Jesus knew what a challenge it would be for the church to ever be united so he made it a central part of his prayer life to envision unity for all God’s people.  I am a minister in a denomination that puts unity in the very title of our official name (The United Methodist Church), but I am reminded of a photo of a local church marquee which, surely through a typographical error, boasted itself as the “Untied” Methodist Church --- and sometimes we are.

We are often untied by our difference of opinions, and evidence of that was obvious at our recent General Conference of United Methodists as protests and counter protests on various church petitions were voiced.  And we are often untied in the local church by arguments among ourselves regarding everything from the menu at fellowship suppers and the dress code for the ushers at Sunday services.  Good grief.

And if we are that untied within denominations, it stands to reason that we are perhaps not only untied but snarled in a tangle across denominations.  The very existence of different branches of Christendom stands as a judgment on our failure to achieve unity.

I peruse the purportedly Christian blogs on cyberspace in hopes of finding signs of unity and voices of good news only to find authors taking potshots at other authors for their failure to measure up to standards of orthodoxy and “truth,” as they so define it.  And it grieves me that we Christians have so often targeted each other as the enemy.   Is it any wonder that the world at large still doesn’t believe when we show such lack of love toward fellow believers in Christ? 

In Galatians 5:15, Paul makes an observation, “if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another.”  Instead of pointing out the errors of doctrine in our sisters and brothers in Christ, why not look for the ways they are serving Christ in their words and deeds?  Rather than looking with disdain at our unorthodox cousins, why not point out the spiritual gifts they bring to the table of the Lord?

Let the people of God, who call themselves followers of Jesus, instead of “consuming each other” seek to live in answer to the prayer of Jesus that “they may be one . . . so the world might [indeed] believe.”