We have just finished the 2010 edition of Inquirers’ Class. I am so thankful for intelligent and passionately seeking people. The class at times was exhilarating, at least for me. It gives me hope for the church that there are still folks who don’t want easy answers; who wish to challenge the magisterial dogma of the church; who want to be engaged intellectually as well as emotionally with their faith…with this God among us. It is a sign of the times I think that people will no longer settle for an ossified static belief system; they want to encounter faith as something alive and on the move…relevant…making a difference in our lives and, quite contingently, in our world. Correct me if I’m wrong.
The sacred cows of our theology handed down over the centuries are up for question and conversation. (As they in actuality have always been subject to debate, never in stone, always speculative) What do we in truth mean when we speak of the Trinity?…When we speak of resurrection are we speaking of a once upon a time thing, or do we wish to speak of a profound reality alive among us still…Is Incarnation an other-worldly supernatural event, or is Incarnation a means of describing our true humanity…Is the Creation a thing created once upon a time, or is Creation a process inhabited by the one whom we name as God…Was there a “fall” from original perfection, or is the Genesis mythology telling us a story of humans becoming conscious capable of both love and violence….And the person of Jesus about whom historically we know very little….are the narratives of the Gospels really stories about this particular perapatetic sage from Galilee set apart from other humans, or are they stories about how God sees the human community.
The point I want to make in all this is that the life of faith is not about dogmatic belief…. a neat set of isms that we all sign onto; a belief system which would exclude any dissension….no, the life of faith bears us into a future of discovery…a life of imaginative inquiry…new questions; new answers sometimes…honest, hard work to be sure, but a quest always in our becoming a people who are to be the stewards of creation…co-creators with the God of all…a God I muse that is still in the process of discovery as well….God omniscient only to the extent that God knows that there is still more to know.
How insipid would life be if it were all said and done, scripture a rulebook, an owner’s manual….We are the ones to say and do…we, makers of our world, made in the image of God…speaking the world into being still…becoming mature in our work as God lives into God’s vocation as well….something to celebrate…and a reason to be together in this place of learning and discovery….a reason this life of faith is worth the work…..worth it all.
