I don't subscribe to any doctrines.
And that's an odd thing for someone to say, especially for someone who claims to be a Christian.
Right?
But, it's true. I no longer subscribe or hold tightly to any doctrines.
"Doctrines"?
Webster defines doctrine as "a belief or set of beliefs taught by a Church, political party, or group."
And so, yeah - I subscribe to a grand total of zero of those.
Churches teach that in order to be a Christian you need to subscribe to ideas like …
The atonement.
Salvation.
Heaven / Hell.
A Second Coming of sorts.
A belief in Jesus as the Son of God.
… And more.
You gotta hold them tightly.
You gotta white-knuckle them.
You gotta fiercely grip them.
Now, not every church will agree on the same set of beliefs/ideas/doctrines/whatever, of course, but my point is that most churches will tell you that you need to firmly believe at least SOMETHING in order to be "in" or to "make it to heaven" or to be considered a "Christian".
I subscribe to no such beliefs.
Why?
Because beliefs change, right? They come and they go depending on the experiences we have in our lives.
Like.
I used to "firmly believe" in hell. I held on to it as an important "doctrine" or "belief" that gave structure and order to my faith.
Same with the atonement, the idea that Jesus' death somehow bridged a gaping chasm that existed between me and God because of my sin and wrong doing - I had a white-knuckle grip on it.
And the Second Coming of Jesus - I 1000% believed that Jesus was going to come back to rapture away his church, destroy the earth, and set up his Kingdom in its place.
All of these were beliefs that I would have argued for until my last breath.
But.
Now?
Nah. I don't believe in any of them! I don't believe in hell. I don't think Jesus' death bridged any sort of gap between me and God. I don't believe there ever was a gap! And I don't think Jesus will return because I don't think he ever left. All of these things that were once important to me no longer are because my life experiences have led me in different directions.
I still "believe" in Jesus, yes.
I still love Jesus, yes.
I still love my Bible, yes.
… But all of those things look drastically different for me than they did 5, 6, 7 years ago.
And so my point is that subscribing to beliefs are pointless (for me*) because my experiences are constantly growing and changing and causing my beliefs to shift and change so much so that the beliefs I once had no longer fit the context of my experiences.
(*I'm describing where I'm at … this doesn't need to be where you're at.)
Hell made sense to me until I became friends with an Atheist.
The idea of me being born a sinner made sense to me until I held my perfect newborn daughter.
Jesus returning to rapture away all the believers made sense to me until I became close to a lot of non-believers and began to wonder why good people who believed the wrong things would get "left behind" in favor of some not-so-good people who believed the right things.
What I'm saying is that as my experiences changed and shifted, I began to outgrow these beliefs and so now rather than subscribe to a belief, I anticipate my experiences and let my experiences reveal various aspects of God and faith that I didn't see before.
Sure, I still "believe" things.
I believe in God.
I believe in Jesus.
I believe in love.
I believe in "the Trinity" (as I said in my post a couple of weeks back).
But.
Honestly, I hold it all rather loosely and take it all day by day, asking God or the Divine or the Universe every morning to use that day and the experiences I'll have in it to reveal something to me about myself and himself/herself/themselves that I never saw or recognized before.
And so I guess my beliefs evolve and devolve, right?
Like I just said, I still have beliefs … I just don't subscribe to them or white-knuckle them like I used to, but (instead) let them exist in my life and allow them to come and go with my experiences.
I don’t force them to stay.
I don't push them away.
INSTEAD.
I give them the space and freedom to move and grow and come and go.
I realize all of that might sound quite confusing, but it's just where I'm at. I'm learning to hold "beliefs" and "doctrines" loosely so that I can lean into my life experiences and let the Divine use those experiences to show me pieces of herself that I never saw before.
And this is important, I think, because white-knuckling a belief can very easily cause me to miss out on what a life experience might have to show me about God, right?
Like.
If I insist that God operates in a certain way or only moves or acts in a particular manner, I may be much less aware of how a life experience might show me how God operates or moves or acts in a much different way.
For example …
If I white-knuckle hell.
OR.
White-knuckle the Second Coming.
OR.
White-knuckle the atonement.
Well.
Then I might be closed off and unaware of how God might operate and move outside of those beliefs, beyond those beliefs.
"God can't move outside of those things", you might say, "they are the truth!"
Wait.
So …
God can't operate outside of those things?
God can't exist outside of those beliefs?
God must be aligned with those doctrines?
If that's the case, I think we have to answer a very important question:
Is God tied to those beliefs or are we tied to those beliefs?
Is God incapable of existing outside of those beliefs or have we used those beliefs to create a box in our attempt to contain God?
Hm.
Whatever the case may be, what I'm discovering in my own life is that if I hold all of those beliefs loosely and trust that God can and will use my life experiences to teach more and more and more about his infiniteness.
Well.
Then I might just continue to grow and evolve into a more inclusive, loving, and complete human being who is chasing after and walking with a God who can't be contained and won't be contained because they are immeasurably greater than anything I could ever imagine.
I've ditched all of my doctrines in favor of my experiences and it's the most wild ride I've ever been on.
Much love,
Glenn || MY BOOK || PATREON || BUY ME A COFFEE
I really enjoy your reflections. Thank you for taking the time to do them. I've been churched all my life, but in mainline congregations that have held doctrines and creeds fairly loosely, and weren't hung up on "belief". I don't think you could find a single congregation where every person believes every line of a creed. That said, you can find plenty congregations--mostly conservative and evangelical--where people are expected to believe, and where people would never admit that there are parts to which they don't subscribe. I meet "refugees" from those churches all the time. In conversations, I can see how strongly they react to certain things precisely because they were stuffed into such a narrow church box for parts of their lives. For me, because I've never felt the pressure to "believe" a doctrine or creed, I've actually felt the freedom to enjoy saying them in a body of people, to think about them and explore their history. In other words, I've been able to go deep in them and contemplate their meaning. Years ago, I heard Nadia Bolz-Weber say of her church that no one believes every line of a creed or doctrine, but for every person who doesn't believe a particular point, there's someone across the aisle who does, and so the whole body is covered. I loved that. To me, it personified holding these things loosely. It was also a reminder that we are the BODY of Christ, working together. We carry and cover one another. Whereas (correct me if I'm wrong), it seems like the evangelical thing is that each person is focused on their personal perfection/salvation, but to a level that seems impossible to live up to, and which also has the perverse and counter-intuitive effect of distancing the presence of God in their lives. I guess if I had to sum up what I see with ex-evangelicals who come to my church, it would be that. Because they don't believe without question so much they were told to believe without question, they have a sense of God being distant at best, and absent at worst. It takes a while for people to leave that behind and learn that they have freedom to explore. Some people I know have been out of that world for years, but that foundation is still so strong that they are more reactive than those raised in mainline congregations. Keep in mind I'm generalizing here. There are plenty of exceptions. I've known plenty of evangelicals with spiritual imagination and openness and plenty non-evangelicals with dry, bloodless faith. Anyway, thanks again for your reflections. They're always thought-provoking.