The Great Comma and the Great Commandment

Last time I wrote about love being more important that doctrine.  If that is the case what do we do about the creed(s)―the statements of faith that are supposed be a foundational statement of belief that all Christians hold.  It is one of the parts of the worship service that most Christian denominations include.  Indeed, those that do are considered to be credal Christians.  The Anglican Church of Canada has both the Nicene Creed and Apostles’ Creed in the Book of Alternative Services.

The creeds are statements of what Christians are supposed to believe about God and Jesus.  However, as has been pointed out by Richard Rohr (who has become my go to guy on things theological and religious), they leave out what Jesus did in his public ministry which is primarily what the Gospels speak about; his miracles and parables and other important things in his life.  Rohr states:

If you worship in one of the liturgical Christian traditions, you probably know the opening words of the Apostles’ Creed by heart:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his 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 into hell;. .

But have you ever noticed the huge leap the creed makes between “born of the Virgin Mary” and “suffered under Pontius Pilate”? A single comma connects the two statements, and falling into that yawning gap, as if it were a mere detail, is everything Jesus said and did between his birth and his death! 

In Christian theology we have the Great Commandment, "you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Great Commandment, therefore, is an important part of what is represented by the Great Comma. IT is through Jesus life that we are shown the Way to live; it is love in action. 

If love is more important than doctrine i.e. belief, then Jesus life, is what we should be paying attention to as a model of how we should love one another.  I must be honest and confess that I am somewhat ambivalent about the creeds and having people recite them in our worship services.  Our prayer book does make it optional with the instruction that the celebrant may (my emphasis) invite the congregation to recite it.  On the one hand, it is foundational and states the things that all Christians are supposed to believe in, including the virgin birth and the (bodily) resurrection.  However, the creed can be a stumbling block to those who have trouble with these and other statements of faith.  Personally, I can reconcile the statements in the creeds with what I believe and statements such as the virgin birth mean what I intend them to mean; to take the lead from Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

That being said I do not believe that the creed should be an impediment for people being part of a Christian community.  Jesus certainly had short shrift for impediments and stumbling blocks, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble”.

That does not mean that I agree that Christian clergy should believe anything and everything including being atheists as in the case of Gretta Vosper who has been confirmed as a United Church of Canada minister and who is a self declared atheist―but that is for another discussion. 

So, you can see from this the mine-field, or perhaps I should say mind-field, doctrine can lead us into.  In conclusion, I believe (that is creedal language) that we should focus on the Great Comma and the Great Commandment rather than the Creeds, as important as they are. 

Blessings on your journey

Becoming Like Children

The concept of becoming like a child has been constellating in my mind in the last couple of weeks.  I can’t say I thought of the bible passage until a few days ago when I realized there had been a number of examples of this that were coming together in my life.  The bible passage that finally broke through into my consciousness was Matthew 18: 3, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. 

This started with reading Maggie’s Memories, a book of letters by Margaret Duncan Borden to her grandchildren.  The letters were compiled by Eldon Hay who is a cousin (although I haven’t quite figured out the actual relationship — it’s something like a second cousin once removed.  Eldon and his wife Ann attended our open house (open cottage) a few weeks ago and gave us a copy of the book as a cottage warming present.  The book is subtitled “A Covententer Childhood in 19^th Century Botsford Parish, New Brunswick.   The letters are delightful recollections of a child’s life in a very different age.  As Eldon notes in the introduction, “Written as a series of vignettes ranging in time from earliest memories to the first stirrings of womanhood, the letters conjure up a remarkably vivid picture of an extraordinarily happy childhood in rural New Brunswick during the 1860’s, 7o’s and early 80’s”. 

The letters capture vividly and marvellously the ethos of a completely different time and place that existed in Canada at the beginning of Confederation.  Beyond the enjoyment of reading the letters I was surprized by the association which came to my mind which was of Alice in Wonderland/through the Looking Glass.  This puzzled me at first but on reflection I believe because it was written from the perspective of a young girl but also and possible more significantly because both works capture something of the efforts of a child to navigate through a somewhat strange and new landscape.  Undoubtedly there were no Mad Hatters or Cheshire Cats or in Maggie’s Memories but there seemed to be a few characters that could appear that way to a child’s eyes. 

The next adventure in the worldview of a child was watching a video of To Kill a Mockingbird a few nights ago.  We only have a small portable TV and a VCR player (no DVDs in our cottage life) so we are restricted to movies we can get on VHS.  This work also caught the world view of a young girl, Scout.  There were monster who turned out to be friendly giants i.e. Boo Radley and evil demons who were defeated in the end i.e. Bob Ewell, the evil man who was defeated by the friendly giant who rescued the young prince, Jem. 

All these brought back memories of my childhood and how the world could be a very scary place at times.  It was a world that, if not full of monsters, contained monsters under the bed and in other dark places and giants who I was not sure were friendly or unfriendly.   I spent a long time trying to figure out how the world actually worked and what my place was in it.  The reality is that I am still trying to figure those things out.  So what is it that Jesus means when he tells us to become like children — or like a little child?  The next verse does give us a clue, 4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  I find it is a real challenge to be truly humble which requires me to put my ego in the service of the Self as Carl Jung would say or in theological terms — to put the ego in the service of God.  The best perspective of humility that I know is by Sister Jane, an Anglican Nun.  She says that to be humble is to see clearly.  Perhaps that is seeing the world through a child’s eyes with no assumptions about being in control.  Blessings.