Belief-o-Matic
According to the Belief-o-Matic Quiz at Beliefnet.com, the following three religious groups are the most similar to my own personal faith:
1. Bahá'í Faith (100%)
2. Reform Judaism (98%)
3. Liberal Quakers (96%)
Personally, after looking at each of the descriptions, I think that I'm actually most in tune with the Liberal Quakers. But if I was going to construct a sort of "What Dave Believes" along the lines of what Beliefnet provides for each of those faiths, it'd look kind of like this...
• Belief in Deity - I believe in one personal God Almighty, creator, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent--incorporeal spirit.
• Incarnations - Jesus was the uniquely authoritative, chosen Son of God whose supernatural wisdom and insight, revealed in his life and teachings, provide an ongoing example of how God calls us to live and relate to him. That said, we are all sons and daughters of God, and our main focus should be on experiencing and listening to God, whose love, presence, and direction are accessible to everyone.
• Origin of Universe and Life - God created all from nothing and controls all phenomena that modern science reveals about the origins of the universe and life. Science serves to reveal rather than dispute God's awesome creative powers.
• After Death - While I don't claim any certainty about the details of the afterlife, I do believe that those God deems to be faithful will find eternal reward and that those who reject God will be punished. I think our primary focus, however, should be on what we are called to do with the lives we have been given, not on what might come afterward. As the Liberal Quaker description put it: God is love, love is eternal, and our actions in life should reflect love for all of humanity.
• Why Evil? - I do not believe in the traditional notion of original sin and I have numerous questions about the idea of Satan. I believe that our physical nature is animalistic and that our tendency to selfishness is rooted in that fact, rather than in the external influence of a malevolent spiritual entity. Beyond our physical being, God has given us a spiritual nature through which he calls us to transcend our selfish, animalistic instincts and instead to live selflessly in love for God and each other. God gives us free will to choose between our selfish instinct and our transcendent calling. Sin, evil, and separation from God results when we choose self-interest.
• Salvation - I believe our main focus should be on living the kind of life that Jesus modeled and described. While no one can remedy their shortcomings and sin by their own actions, we have assurance that God is merciful and forgiving. That means that when we live our lives in faithful, prayerful obedience to the principles that Jesus announced as the Greatest Commands and when we approach God in humble repentance for our sins, we can have hope that he will find favor in us and redeem us in spite of our failures.
• Undeserved Suffering - God gave humans free will to cause each other either pleasure or pain, and an unfortunate consequence of our free will is that we frequently choose to live in such a way that we inflict suffering on each other. Even where natural events occur to create suffering, I do not believe that they should be understood as God's causing suffering for some punitive reason. I believe that God suffers with us and that he is also able to turn even very negative circumstances into something instructive or otherwise beneficial. Understanding that suffering is unavoidable in life, our goal should be to act as God's instruments in bringing comfort and healing where suffering exists.
• Contemporary Issues - I believe that human life and liberty are gifts to be valued. To the extent that abortion ends human life, I believe it is wrong. I believe that women and men are equally valued in God's eyes and that neither gender enjoys a monopoly on spiritual gifts or talents. I believe that God does not love homosexual people any less than he loves any of the rest of us. While I do not fault those who in the spirit of love express their belief that homosexual behavior is inconsistent with God's will, I believe that the question is not easily answered and ultimately rests solely between God and the individuals involved in that kind of behavior. Above all else, I believe that God's grace and forgiveness is sufficient to cover the sins of anyone who is sincerely trying to follow him, despite any imperfection in our understandings or actions.
posted by Pelagius @ 4:56 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Cool test, Dave! I'm still trying to figure out why I ended up with 100% Conservative Christian/Protestant and yet I agree with nearly everything you described :)!! I had only 42% agreement with Liberal Quakers.
Jill K
Now that we've seen the creed, do we get to see the road that got you there? View of Scripture? View of orthodoxy?
There are a few other questions, but I'll stop there.
djp
David, I have previously discussed my view of scripture here. I’ll also refer you to another earlier post for a fairly comprehensive, big picture explanation of how I arrived at these opinions.
JR, I have previously explained my personal disagreements with the tenets of the Baha'i faith: "Although it is true that Baha'i is similar in the respect that it teaches that multiple historic religious thinkers have been inspired by God, Baha'i is messianic in its own right - it is to Islam what Christianity was to Judaism. While admirable, nothing in Baha'u'llah's teachings leads me to believe that he is anything approaching Jesus's equal as a religious figure in general or as the Son of God in particular. Furthermore, I think that he was incorrect in teaching that religious traditions are not really in conflict with each other. In fact, the teachings of the world's major religions do conflict with each other in very many ways - but that does not destroy the fact that there is a discernable kernel of similarity among them, which I have previously discussed. As I pointed out, I think the differences are the product of human fallability, whereas Baha'i would teach that they were simply divinely-inspired variations intended to reach each society in its peculiar historical and cultural setting."
To be sure, I do believe that other religious traditions - including Buddhism and Islam - are the product of authentic encounters that their founders had with God. But an authentic religious experience does not automatically result in a perfect understanding of that experience. I believe that Mohammed and Buddha did the best that they could to express the lessons learned from their encounters with God, although their understandings fell short of the one with which Jesus was blessed. I have great respect for what Mohammed taught about the necessity of submission to God, just as I have great respect for Buddha's teaching about compassion, contemplation, and the cultivation of selflessness. But neither of them was the Messiah, the chosen Son of God.
I understand why, based on your understanding of scripture, you are concerned about the "necessity of being united with God in covenant," and why you see ritual as being integral to that union. It's not a concern that I share, though. The teaching of many psalmists and prophets, and the teachings of Jesus himself, forcefully de-emphasized the importance of ritual while at the same time driving home the point that right relationship with God is the product of a submissive, repentant heart rather than participation in ritual. Yes, there are voices even in the New Testament that continued to advocate ritual as a prerequisite to relationship with God, but remember how many in the Jerusalem church insisted that Gentile Christians must adopt Jewish practice - and how Paul (with whom I have been known to disagree, on occasion) refuted them. In light of the apparent tension between the ritual-focused understanding of many of the biblical authors and the anti-ritualistic thinking of Jesus and several of the prophets, I am not persuaded that God's willingness to join in relationship with someone is dependent on their participation in some prescribed routine.
That having been said, I don't write off baptism as unimportant. There is significant value in symbolism, even if it is not particularly necessary. Weddings do not mark the beginning of a relationship between the participants, nor do they mystically enable love between the bride and groom, but they are important events that formalize and make concrete a commitment already existing between the couple getting married. Likewise, baptism is not the beginning of one's relationship with God, and I don't think baptism is a prerequisite to forgiveness, but it is an important demonstration of the Christian's dedication to God. Therefore baptism is not something that should be either taken lightly or passed over as insignificant, but neither do I think of it as an absolute necessity.
JR, I know how firmly you believe in a sort of all-or-nothing approach when it comes to scripture, and I respect the strength of your conviction. But, as I have argued before, I think it is a bit hyperbolic to suggest that biblical authors were either 100% correct or damnable liars. There is a perfectly reasonable third explanation: they may have been ordinary men who didn't always completely or perfectly understand what God was doing. This opens up the possibility that they were sometimes 100% correct, and sometimes only about 10%, while always being honest and sincere. I think that is the most accurate way of thinking about the biblical authors.
Respectfully,
D.
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