rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_342936e1-8254-5e54-a003-c3d4bc5ff1f3">1 Those who oppose this insist that this is all there is, that only what we can measure and observe and see with our eyes is real. There is nothing else. Which perspective is more “closed-minded”? Which perspective is more “open”?
An atheist is a person of tremendous faith. In our discussions about the things that matter most then, we aren’t talking about faith or no faith. Belief or no belief. We are talking about faith in what? Belief in what? The real question isn’t whether we have it or not, but what we have put it in.
Everybody follows somebody. All of us make decisions every day about what is important, how to treat people, and what to do with our lives. These decisions come from what we believe about every aspect of our existence. And we got our beliefs from somewhere. We have been formed, every one of us, by this complicated mix of people and places and things. Parents and teachers and artists and scientists and mentors—we are each taking all of these influences and living our lives according to which teachings we have made our own. Some insist that they aren’t influenced by any person or any religion, that they think for themselves. And that’s an honorable perspective. The problem is they got that perspective from . . . somebody. They’re following somebody even if they insist it is themselves they are following.
Everybody is following somebody. Everybody has faith in something and somebody.
We are all believers.
Way
As a Christian, I am simply trying to orient myself around living a particular kind of way, the kind of way that Jesus taught is possible. And I think that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
This isn’t irrational or primitive or blind faith. It is merely being honest that we all are living a “way.”
I’m convinced being generous is a better way to live.
I’m convinced forgiving people and not carrying around bitterness is a better way to live. I’m convinced having compassion is a better way to live. I’m convinced pursuing peace in every situation is a better way to live. I’m convinced listening to the wisdom of others is a better way to live. I’m convinced being honest with people is a better way to live.
This way of thinking isn’t weird or strange; it is simply acknowledging that everybody follows somebody, and I’m trying to follow Jesus.
Over time when you purposefully try to live the way of Jesus, you start noticing something deeper going on. You begin realizing the reason this is the best way to live is that it is rooted in profound truths about how the world is. You find yourself living more and more in tune with ultimate reality. You are more and more in sync with how the universe is at its deepest levels.
Jesus’s intention was, and is, to call people to live in tune with reality. He said at one point that if you had seen him, you had “seen the Father.”2 He claimed to be showing us what God is like. In his compassion, peace, truth telling, and generosity, he was showing us God.
And God is the ultimate reality. There is nothing more beyond God.
Jesus at one point claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all other religions. That completely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality. This kind of life Jesus was living, perfectly and completely in connection and cooperation with God, is the best possible way for a person to live. It is how things are.
Jesus exposes us to reality at its rawest.
So the way of Jesus is not about religion; it’s about reality.
It’s about lining yourself up with how things are.3
Perhaps a better question than who’s right, is who’s living rightly?
Springs
This is where the springs on the trampoline come in. When we jump, we begin to see the need for springs. The springs help make sense of these deeper realities that drive how we live every day. The springs aren’t God. The springs aren’t Jesus. The springs are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to the depth that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of the Christian faith.
They aren’t the point.
They help us understand the point, but they are a means and not an end. We take them seriously, and at the same time we keep them in proper perspective.
Take, for example, the doctrine—the spring—called the Trinity. This doctrine is central to historic, orthodox Christian faith. While there is only one God, God is somehow present everywhere. People began to call this presence, this power of God, his “Spirit.” So there is God, and then there is God’s Spirit. And then Jesus comes among us and has this oneness with God that has people saying things like God has visited us in the flesh.4 So God is one, but God has also revealed himself to us as Spirit and then as Jesus. One and yet three. This three-in-oneness understanding of God emerged in the several hundred years after Jesus’s resurrection. People began to call this concept the Trinity. The word trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible. Jesus didn’t use the word, and the writers of the rest of the Bible didn’t use the word. But over time this belief, this understanding, this doctrine, has become central to how followers of Jesus have understood who God is. It is a spring, and people jumped for thousands of years without it.5 It was added later. We can take it out and examine it. Discuss it, probe it, question it. It flexes, and it stretches.
In fact, its stretch and flex are what make it so effective. It is firmly attached to the frame and the mat, yet it has room to move. And it has brought a fuller, deeper, richer understanding to the mysterious being who is God.
Once again, the springs aren’t God. They have emerged over time as people have discussed and studied and experienced and reflected on their growing understanding of who God is. Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him. This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations.
In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people that when they encountered God, they “heard the sound of words but saw no form.”6
No form, no shape.
Nothing you could see.
In Moses’s day, the way you honored and respected whatever gods you followed was by making carvings or sculptures of them and then bowing down to what you had made. These were gods you could get your mind around. Moses is confronting people with an entirely new concept of what the true God is like. He is claiming that no statue or carving could ever capture this God, because this God has no shape or form.
This was a revolutionary idea in the history of religion.
You are holding a book in your hands. It has shape and volume and weight and all the stuff that makes it a thing.
It has thingness.
This
