Bethesda United Methodist Church

Faith Questions Sunday - January 25th, 2004

The following are the "faith questions" presented at the 8:45 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services.

Questions about God:

Does God grieve?

Rachel: Yes. Absolutely. I believe that God grieves when we hurt each other. God grieves that fact that we cannot find other ways of resolving conflict in this world besides war. God grieves the fact that we still separate ourselves on the basis of skin color and intellect and social background. I think that God grieves a lot. But the difference is that God has great hope, in us and in the world. God's vision of life if much longer than ours, so while our grief may paralyze us, God is not paralyzed by God's grief.

Ron: I think if you look at some of the prophets you get a glimpse into the heart of God. God on the one hand wanting to bring judgement, and God at the same time saying, "but how can I give you up?" Any of you who have been parents and have tried to offer both freedom and boundaries for your children, you know that your heart is going to get broken. I do think that we break God's heart, but I don't think that God gives up easily on us, either.

How do we know God and Jesus exist?

Questions about Prayer:

Does God hear us all the time? If so, why do we pray?

Ron: I do think that God hears us all the time and to get to the nature of prayer is is to the second part of the question. We pray, I think, as much for our own sake as for God's sake. We don't pray to shout so that God will hear us as much as we pray to put ourselves in a position to hear God. Sometimes we have a "vending machine/transaction" model of prayer in our minds - that is, is if we say the right words and we press the right buttons, God will give us "C3." And I don't visualize prayer at all like that. I think prayer in the Christian tradition is part of our relationship with God. It is as much about listening as it is about asking. There are times when we do pray for other people - we do that every Sunday here. In some way God uses those prayers to bring healing to the world. I can't tell you how that happens. I do know that Jesus asks us to pray, invites us to pray, and I don't know the metaphysics behind it. The best image I have for that is from Marjorie Suhocki, who says that God works with the world the way that it is to transform the world into what it might become. And she says that prayer changes what is, therefore it changes what might become. That is, it gives God something else to weave into the tapestry that God is weaving in the world. I love that image. I don't know if it fits with the metaphysics of what is going on in prayer. But I do think that God wants our prayers, but I think we need our prayers more than God does.

Rachel: I agree, I think that prayers are not just about asking they are also about listening. I think that God knows thinks for us, knows our future, knows our past, knows things about us that we don't necessarily know or want to admit about ourselves and so I think that prayer is important for that reason. That we listen for what God would have us do, have us know about our world about our lives. [Prayer] is about creating an open relationship with God where we communicate with God and where God communicates with us. Maybe you have seen the movie "Bruce Almighty" with all the email prayers that he answers "YES" and it creates massive chaos. Prayer is not just about our asking, it is also about our discerning and our communication with God.
Why are our prayers so often unanswered?

Ron: That's an eternal question for people of faith. It goes back to the Psalms. Read the Psalms: "How long O God will this go on?" I think sometimes our prayers aren't answered. Sometimes our prayers are answered in ways that we aren't ready to hear yet, or receive. I think sometimes we pray unanswerable prayers, in the sense that it's just the cry of our heart and there may not be a real answer that is to come other than God's presence. I think that is the answer and the response that we always get when we pray in some way, that God responds to us. Sometimes not giving us what we expect or hope for or dream for.

Rachel: I agree. I think that God does answer prayers, even the ones that we don't think God answers, because God answers them in ways that we don't always look for or expect. And sometimes we don't know that our prayers are being answered because we are looking for what we want instead of what God is trying to do.

Ron: But that's a good question, and a question I live with, a lot.
How does prayer help if God already has things planned out?

Questions about Doctrine:

How does the Trinity work?
How does the incarnation relate to the Holy Spirit?
What's the difference between pre-destination and pre-determination? What do Methodists believe?

Ron: In the great theological battles between Calvinists and Arminians, the Methodists came down on the Arminian side. That is, taking very seriously the idea that humans have free will. We really do have the moral capacity to choose for good or for ill, and that's part of it. God does not pre-program us like robots, and God doesn't cast our fate before us without our having any role to play, in an active sort of way. So Wesley and the Methodists and our theology has come down on this side to say that while God may know how things may turn out, God does not bind our hands. We are active, moral players in the universe, that we really have a role to play in our decision making.

Rachel: My understanding of Methodism is that we do subscribe very strongly to this idea of free will and that it's a gift from God. In our new members classes we talk about free will being so wide and so great that we even have the choice to choose to reject God. That's how great this gift is from God. That does'=t mean that God doesn't have a design or a purpose, or things that God wants from us and from creation, but we have to participate in it.
Why don't Methodists go to confession?

Ron: Because we've moved on to perfection. No, I don't think that's it - that's part of our theology - that we are moving toward perfection - but I don't think that's really it. (Rachel: Through confession and forgiveness!). As part of the Protestant Reformation there were some practices that were intentionally moved away from, one of them being the practice of going to a priest for confession. The idea of the priesthood of all believers is that we have immediate access to God, directly to God, and so we can pray our confession to God, directly. Now we will still incorporate in worship sometimes prayers of confession that are sometimes part of the liturgy. We have a day coming up that is very much focused on repentance and confession - Ash Wednesday. So it is still part of our tradition, but in general for Protestants, and for Methodists in particular, it is more of an individual act of confession, or a corporate act of confession in worship than it is a rite of going through a priest for confession. Not that we don't believe in it, or don't need it.
Rachel: I agree.
To be a Christian must one interpret the "virgin birth" to mean that Jesus did not have a biological father?
What is the relationship between the apophatic nature of God and revelation?

Questions about Salvation:

Will people of other religions go to heaven?

Rachel: We got a question similar to this in the first service, and this question is asking something that is central to our faith: what is salvation? And how does one get it? I believe that salvation is really more about what God is doing, more than what we are doing. We are saved through God's gift of grace and love and acceptance and by accepting that gift of salvation, we become saved. We are Christians, therefore for us Christ is the way, and salvation isn't, to me, just about what happens after you die, it's not just about eternal reward. But it's about knowing in this life that there is truth, that there is something we can believe in, and a relationship that we can have with God in this life, not just an eternal reward. But to get to the question about eternal reward, I think that we may believe very strongly that Christ is the only way for us to get to heaven. But I don't think that even the strength of our conviction allows us the arrogance to tell God what God should do about salvation. And for people who follow another path and give themselves to God in another way, or call God by another name, God may act in their lives, act in the world to save them. I hope that is the God that I follow, that I worship. I hope that is what heaven looks like. I hope that hell is a very, very small place.

Ron: I really struggle against notions of Christianity, or notions of faith in general, that would seek to reduce it to some "eternal fire insurance policy." To me that limits what Jesus was about, that limits what Christianity is about, what our faith is about. It's not just about this transaction that happens between us and God, or getting through this life to get to the next life. So in some ways, I am not even sure we are asking the right question when we ask that question - not that that is a bad question, it's a real question. But it's not, maybe, a big enough question. The bigger question goes back to what Rachel was talking about: salvation. I think we have a God whose predisposition is one of forgiveness and mercy and grace. And I am so grateful that we don't make the judgement about who's in and who's out of God's favor, because I have a feeling that our boundaries would be too narrow, just given human nature. So, I think it is possible to believe with passion, to preach with conviction, to live your life, to stake your life, as I have staked my life on the confession of Christ as my way of salvation without excluding others. I have a pretty broad vision of who's in God's kingdom.
What are we saved from and what are we saved to?

Rachel: We'll just build a little on the last [salvation] question. There are two ways of looking at the cross, which is for us the symbol of salvation. You can see the cross, and the crucifixion, the death and resurrection of Jesus as the thing that God did to save the world. Or it is, for us, as Christians, the ultimate sign of God's saving grace that is and always has been there, but it is, for us the sign that God is reaching out and saving us. I think we are saved from sin, which means a lot of thing. It doesn't mean that we are saved from failure or temptation or mistakes, but it means that we are saved from hopelessness, from a sense that there is nothing to believe in or live for. And I think that we also have the grace that we are forgiven when we do sin, when we do make mistakes and that is what salvation means to me.

Ron: I can take the second part of that question - what are we saved for - and this does go back to my basic understanding of faith, my basic understanding of why I am a Christian. I think we are saved to lose ourselves in service to others. I think we are saved from a self-absorption that frees us to be able to be in authentic relationships with other people without needing to take things and being able freely to give things. William Sloane Coffin recently talked about the difference between always having to earn your way in the world and being in a position where you can express yourself, and he talked about the fact that it is the love of God that frees us from always having to go out there and prove ourselves. I think that's what salvation is, salvation is accepting by God's grace that we are children of God, and then being freed to live as if we really are. That's the what we are saved for.
Who goes to heaven? Do you have to be "saved" to get there?

Questions about the Bible:

What important lessons or points to you take away from the Sermon on the Mount?
How are we to understand that early Christian conviction that Jesus would return--but he didn't and hasn't?

Ron:

Rachel:

Questions about the Christian Life:

What does it mean to "love God"? How do you actually do that?
How can I see God in another person--especially one who hates me and goes out of his way to show it?

Rachel: Of course it's very hard. It's often hard to see God in people whom we dislike or take issue with or who are trying to do us harm. We meet together in a covenant discipleship group (Ron, Glen, Scilla, Loren Bullock, John Whitman and myself) and one of the things that we try to do each week is to try and remember to see God in other people, even those people we might not necessarily like. And I think it takes accountability, it takes a community to help you to do that, it takes prayer...Maybe it takes asking the question "What happened to that person that makes them so hateful, so hurtful?" and trying to see that person with a little bit of compassion. You are not always going to succeed - we are not perfect - especially when someone is trying to hurt us, it's not an easy thing to try and see God in that person. But we are called as Christians to try.

Ron: And I would say that I try to approach the world and try and approach people, that everyone is a child of God - I do think that there are people who hide it better than others. And that is where the intentionality of our hearts comes in. That is where we choose how we respond to someone. How do you respond to someone else's bitterness, or resentments, or to someone else when they try and do you harm? And Jesus actually said a lot about that. He said that we don't respond by returning it. We respond by trying to transform it by our own graciousness, by our own forgiveness.
What do I do when God seems absent?

Ron: You pray. You cry. You try different things. You talk to friends. I am speaking stream of consciousness, because I think there are times in our lives when we really do feel like God is far away. And no matter how we have been brought up in the faith, no matter how much we've learned the Biblical stories, there are experiential moments when God seems distant. The comfort that I have found in reading the lives and the stories of other people who have walked the way of faith, particularly those whom we have called the saints of the church, is it seems that one of the common themes is going through a period when they felt like this, when they felt that God's presence was not as strong as God's absence. And I think that you hang onto belief in whatever way you can, you live by faith still, hoping that the feelings of faith return. I don't think it means that you stop asking questions or that you try and pretend. I do think it means that you struggle through it.

Rachel: St. John of the Cross called it "the dark night of the soul" and we read earlier this year when there was a lot of talk about Mother Teresa and canonization as a saint that even she experienced some of that absence and distance from God. Even someone that we think of as having an incredible faith, like Mother Teresa. So we can take heart in that, that none of us is excluded from that experience. But that doesn't mean that God is absent from us, it is something that we go through. The Psalms of lament may be a good thing for you to pray when you have those times. It's OK to cry out to God: I don't see you, I don't hear you, I don't feel you, where are you? It's OK and God does hear that.
It has become commonplace for couples to live together before marriage in today's society. How did you approach this subject with the youth on the recent [sexuality] retreat and how do you counsel young couples coming in for marriage classes?
What are the most important lessons we can teach our children about the Christian way of life?