Openness -- A Virtue: A Guest Column
Black and white universes can be dangerous. If either I'm right or you're right and there is no middle ground, then it's likely we'll come to blows -- literally or figuratively. My good friend Steve Kindle asked me to post this statement of a journey of faith. It's a recognition of a post-modern way of looking at the world. Post a comment -- have a conversation!
“This I Believe”
by Rev. Steven F. Kindle


I’m a Protestant clergy person; have been for over 30 years. My study of the Bible and other related interests have captured my imagination and my life for what is now a lifetime. As a young pastor, I was full of myself and my authority. That is to say, I KNEW. I knew the secrets of the universe vouchsafed in the doctrines of my church. As ONE WHO KNEW, I was only too quick to share this knowledge with any and all who came near. These were the easy days when Enlightenment notions still held sway and one could still be confident of the existence of, even the appropriation of, Absolute Truth.

I don’t remember the day or even the year that it happened, but I found myself, dare I admit it...unsure. Unsure of my surety. Maybe it had to do with pluralism, for I found myself engaged in the lives of Muslims, Buddhists, sectarians of all sorts, even atheists. What amazed me most about these so different from me is, in the case of many, may I say, their Christ-likeness? Perhaps I should say their Buddha-likeness or their Mohammed-likeness, and their Gandhi-likeness.

One of the cherished doctrines of Protestant Christianity is that we are saved by grace. In other words, there is nothing humans can do to deserve God’s love and salvation. It is a given to those to whom it is given. Those other, seemingly righteous persons, whose lives evidence all the grace and love of God, but are not of our particular fold, are surely condemned to Perdition. Yet, there they are, so many not of my fold, yet showing forth daily a much more abundant love of neighbor and charity toward all than I would ever muster, God on my side or not.

Perhaps it was relativism that undermined my surety. A Jewish neighbor of mine taught her children that religion, even Judaism, is, finally, an opinion. Consequently one should not become haughty or overbearing in dealing with those who differ. I applaud that, and to it I would add just this: One’s religion is also an accident of birth: of where, of when, and to whom. Any one of us could just as easily be another person quite different from ourselves. Would we wish to condemn us then?

I am convinced of this one thing. I am convinced that honorable religions are here for one purpose: to produce a certain kind of person; in short, a person who acts much the same way as their original teachers acted, who, each in their own way, want us to love and care for our neighbor. As long as religions are concerned with what people need to believe rather than what they need to become, we will continue to be each other’s enemies. When we finally discover our shared purpose as one people, with the same mission, we will no longer be strangers, but friends. This I surely believe.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This one made me cry this evening Bob. It is so simple, it should be so simple. Why do we get lost along the way? My thought was that earth's various religious were various forms of etiquette, a way to get along with others. All rules which a supreme being has given us to get along and realize how similar that we are, rather than different.

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