Every so often people question my Christian faith. Here’s what I believe:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
This creed was the first common creed of the Christian church, circa A.D. 390. This was what Christians believed “made you a Christian” in distinction from pagans and other religious believers and beliefs.
Nothing in here about guns, welfare, illegal immigrants, voting restrictions, abortion, gay marriage, the secondary status of black Americans, sexualized violence, corporate tax breaks–yet for some reason because I don’t hold to an extremely peculiar set of political beliefs I have people telling me online and to my face that I am not a Christian believer.
I actually don’t care what people say. I haven’t been subject to others’ definitions for my faith for forty years. But it is peculiar how people think that because I don’t support their political views, somehow I will be excluded from among the elect and the saved.
My political beliefs and my religious beliefs echo the Reformed position: a reformed body always reforming. The Constitution states it thusly—”a more perfect Union.”
The United States of America is a good country, but it is by no means perfect. Those of us who have achieved the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity (to quote the Preamble to the Constitution) cannot and must not sit by while those of our fellow citizens are denied franchise and position and dignity. We especially must not stand by while people use the God of the Bible to whip people, judge people, and destroy people in the Name of the Lord. Christian believers should be speaking up in protest to see our Lord being used as a political football.
If all we do is to provide for our families and ensure that they are safe, well-fed, educated, and secure, we have done well. But when we have done all this, we cannot then sit back and wait for others who are lacking to catch up. As citizens of the United States, and not simply individuals of fortune, we have a common purpose to “promote the general Welfare”–not just provide what is called “welfare” in our common language of politics, but to ensure that those around us can achieve what we have gained. We are a nation of citizens united with each other.
What I believe about my faith I stated above. What I believe about my country can be summarized as below:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”