1. Describe your personal experience of God and the understanding of God you derive from biblical, theological, and historical sources.
Augustine, in The Trinity, says, “it is difficult to contemplate and fully know the substance of God; who fashions things changeable, yet without any change in [Godself], and creates things temporal, yet without any temporal movement in [Godself].” I would go further and say that is impossible to “fully know the Substance of God.” However, it is in the journey – the questions, the searching, the quest to know the unknowable – that God makes Godself known to us. I heard someone say once that, “The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere, and the circumference is nowhere.” Incomprehensible – This is a good way for me to sum up my experience of God. God is beyond all that we as finite humans can possibly imagine, but is yet knowable in an intimate way that goes beyond any human relationship we can have. I, like other Christians, affirm the fundamental orthodox doctrines of the Christian church, but at the same time I recognize that these are limited ways of expressing what we as humans have come to understand as the nature of God. We move between the opposite extremes of mystery and knowability as we seek to live out a faith based upon the affirmation that “God is truth”; all the while knowing that our apprehension of that “Truth” is limited at best. But our faith also proclaims that God reveals Godself to us in God’s own good time.
So, I am left with an overriding need to find something that will guide me during the journey of discovery that ensures moving toward a meaningful relationship with God and God’s creation. I can find nothing better than the affirmation from First John chapter four that says, “God is love.” I understand that the love of God takes many forms and sometimes it may be a form I don’t like – judgment for example – but nevertheless, the pursuit of a life consumed by God’s love is, for me, the only answer to the often difficult question of “how should we then live.” In Abandonment to Divine Providence, Jean-Pierre de Caussade writes…
“For those who abandon themselves to it, God’s love contains every good thing, and if you long for it with all your heart and soul it will be yours. All God asks for is love, and if you search for this kingdom where God alone rules, you can be quite sure you will find it.”
An example of how this has proven to be true comes from an encounter I had shortly after joining the United Methodist Church. I have a very dear friend who believes "once-saved always-saved". I disagree. I met Bob in a UMC Sunday School class where every morning we would discuss various "theological" issues. Somehow we got on the subject of "once-saved always-saved" and Bob made the emphatic claim that he would question the salvation of anyone who didn’t believe it. We went back and forth for a few minutes and eventually agreed to "debate" the OSAS position the next Sunday. Some of the church leaders were absolutely terrified. All they could see was division, and they just knew that this was going to "tear the church apart.” That next Sunday, we had our debate and in the classroom were several people that hadn’t been there in quite some time. You see, the word had gotten out that Allen and Bob would be debating a very contentious subject and people wanted to be there to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe they came just to see a good fight, but the outcome was miraculous.
I didn’t change Bob’s mind, and he didn’t change mine. I’m not sure that anyone changed their mind concerning OSAS, but people were changed. Many people came up to me afterward to express their new found excitement. Apparently, our "questions" had prompted other "questions.” People who hadn’t seriously studied their Bibles in years we’re not just reading them, but studying them. Their questions were prompting them to learn more of who God is. The simple explanation for why this lead to growth instead of something ugly is because Bob and I were determined that regardless of what happened we would treat each other with love and respect. Because of that, God was present in our debate and continues to be with us in our friendship. So for me, as important as it may be to have a proper theological understanding of who God is, it is equally if not more important to love as God has loved me. My experience of God leads me to the conclusion that either through me or in-spite of me, God will be true to all that God has promised. My experience of God confirms one of my favorite quotes by Verna Dozier. She said…
“Faith always includes the possibility that we could at any given moment be wrong, and that is why it requires courage. Kingdom of God thinking calls us to risk. We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong. The God revealed in Jesus whom I call the Christ is a God whose forgiveness goes ahead of me, and whose love sustains me and the whole created world.”