Beginning a Conversation

October 19, 2017

I realized that my blog has only been used the last couple of years to recount my trips to Nicaragua as I have led mission teams there. While that is something I will continue to do, it also occurs to me that my original plan with the blog was always something more than just mission-related trips. I call the blog “Avenues of Faith” because I have always been interested in how our faith (individually and collectively) interacts on the ground with daily life in our world. Especially how our faith directs us to interact with each other and with others who are different in a world that is constantly becoming smaller and smaller, where information is shared much more freely and quickly, and where diversity of race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality is something we deal with more frequently than we have in ages past.

As that was my intent, I would like to get back to doing that, at least more frequently than I have in the past two years or so. I am very aware that the role our faith plays in our public lives has gotten to be very complicated over the past decade, and especially in the last couple of years. More importantly, I believe that the Christian faith has, unfortunately, been used to further the aims of certain groups who misconstrue the tenets of our faith (sometimes intentionally and other times unintentionally) in order to reinforce their own paradigmatic mental constructions of how others should feel/behave/believe, etc. This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is unfortunate because it paints a picture of Christianity that is skewed quite a bit to one type of mindset and, as a result, those who don’t agree with that mindset mistakenly understand Christianity, or faith in general, to be something that it isn’t. Especially among more liberally minded people, Christianity is seen as being backward, old-fashioned, stuck in another century, unwilling to change, and completely against certain types of lifestyles. While there are pockets of Christianity that fit this stereotypical mold, to equate all Christians with this backward type of thinking is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Thankfully, many (if not most) Christians are of a very different sort. We don’t oppose things out of hand without careful consideration, we don’t equate those with different lifestyles than our own as aberrations or “sinful.” We don’t look at the world with an eye towards what God hates, but rather we look at the world with an eye towards what God loves and who God loves. (Hint, God loves all creation and God loves everyone, without exception!)

Yet these are the types of thinking that get glossed over in what most people think of people who are religious. In addition, those who don’t fit into this mold have done a very poor job of talking about their faith in a way that counters the common narrative. We have done a horrible job telling others why we believe what we believe, what in Scripture calls us to think this way, and why we should be proud of our faith and yearn to share it with everyone, not out of a need to only “save” the lost, but more importantly as a way to share the love God has for us because it is something that should be shared, something that can change lives, something that is worth the time to talk about.

Therefore, I would like to try something a little different. I would like to use this blog to try to start a discussion. It isn’t meant to be a totally comprehensive discussion, but I would like to see where it goes from here. So, I am going to start with a question, seemingly simple, but an important one nonetheless. I would like people to respond with their own answers. From there, I’ll put up new questions and hopefully the conversation will continue. If you have a thought, or an answer or would just like to be part of the conversation, simply reply with a comment.

The first question, as I mentioned, will be simple, at least in theory. It is a basic question. I recently read Rob Bell’s book What We Talk About When We Talk About God and he starts the book in this way:

“I realize that when I use the word God in the title of this book there’s a good chance I’m stepping on all kinds of land mines. Is there a more volatile word loaded down with more history, assumptions, and expectations than that tired, old, relevant, electrically-charged, provocative, fresh, antiquated yet ubiquitous as ever, familiar/unfamiliar word God? And that’s why I use it.”

So, the first question is simply, Who, or what, is God? What do you mean when you use the term? What images come to your mind? What preconceived ideas do you have about who or what this God really is? Who, or what, is God? That is the question, please take a few minutes and reply with a comment.