“Creeds” by Peter Rollins

CATEGORY

• Awakening 2
• Awareness 2
• Being Human 1
• Bible 2
• Buddhism 8
• Christianity 4
• Compassion 1
• Consciousness 5
• Ecumenicalism 1
• Egotism 1
• Enlightenment 2
• Fear 3
• God 7
• Grace 1
• Heart 1
• Heaven 1
• Keith Basar 2
• Koans 1
• Listening 1
• Love 10
• Meaning of Life 1
• Mysticism 5
• Native American 1
• Parables 1
• Philosophy 2
• Poetry 63
• Prayers 1
• Relationships 1
• Religion 3
• Spiritual Teacher 15
• Spirituality 17
• Suffering 2
• Taoism 26
• Theology 3
• Truth 1
• Wisdom 3
• Wisdom Stories 80
• Wisdom Story 31
• Zen 29

“I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God.
I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe.
I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it).
Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows.
I sometimes believe in God — one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom.
Make of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks,
And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how?
Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits.
Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive...
He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time?
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this,
And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom...
The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church;
The Communion of saints; does this mean me?
LOVE
The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?)
The Resurrection of the body.
I believe in singing the body electric
And the life everlasting,
A life we find right here in our midst”

SOURCE: The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction