Re-centering My Wheel of Faith

I was raised in the Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church. The theology they taught me was a conservative one. My view of God was that of a theistic being, hovering out there somewhere, and periodically intervening in his creation when it became necessary to fix it. It was a rather simplistic and narrow view of the Almighty.

Even as a young lad, I questioned the concept of a God who would create a universe based on sound laws and then would often throw them aside as it became necessary to perform another miracle. As I grew older, my logical and mathematical mind made it more and more difficult to accept this view of God. I just could not deal with a God who violated his own scientific principles.

As the years went by, I simply put many of my doubts aside and tried to accept what I didn’t understand by “faith.” However, this faith became a wobbly faith, as my views alternated between “science” and “faith.” I knew that some day I would have to come to grips with this whole matter. I am now sixty-nine years old and the search has become more intense.

This past winter I came across a book by John Shelby Spong with the title, “A New Christianity for a New Age.” As I began to read the book, I became excited, for here was a writer who was dealing with the very problem I was having. It was so freeing to find out that there were others struggling with the same issues. I read the book twice within the next several months.

Spong invalidates the theistic God who lives “up there,” and who constantly intervenes in the affairs of his creatures. He says that this view of God simply no longer squares with what we know in this scientific age. Most of the book is an attempt to find out who God really is. He ends up defining God as being synonymous with Love. He makes a case that Jesus was not born divine, but that his loving nature and exemplary life brought him closer and closer to the divine, and that through a spiritual resurrection, he became the Christ which we now call the Son of God.

I’m not sure that I understand, nor accept it all, but his view does come much closer to the conception of God that I have longed to embrace. However, since my old conception was now dead, I felt the need to learn to know this Christ and this God in a new way. I knew that I had a long way to go in my spiritual quest.

Later in the summer I came across a book by Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, entitled, “The Message and the Kingdom.” These authors examined the lives of Jesus and Paul in the context of the sociology and economics of the times in which they lived. In this book, I found a new way of looking at the messages of Jesus and of Paul. Now I was really on a new journey or spiritual quest. For the first time in a long time, I became really excited about the journey. I had so much to learn.

I then turned to a history of the Anabaptists and Mennonites written recently by John Ruth. He entitled the book, “The Earth is the Lord’s.” As I read again of the willingness of these simple folk to give their all, including their lives for what they believed, I became acutely aware of the seriousness of the quest that I had undertaken. However, my compass was skewed, and I felt myself floundering as I searched for direction. In traditional language, I felt lost. I surely was not as certain of my faith as were these saints who preceded me.

As he searched for direction for his people, you will recall that the prophet Ezekiel described a vision in which he saw a wheel turning within a wheel. I don’t know what he saw, but his description fits what we today call a gyroscope. This is a device with which we can find our way in the absence of other navigational aids such as a compass or the stars. My problem was that since the spinning wheel in my gyroscope was off center, I kept changing directions as the wheel wobbled. I needed somehow to find the center of my faith.

I recently journeyed to Lake Junaluska, North Carolina to a National Older Adults Conference (NOAC) sponsored on a biennial basis by the Church of the Brethren. I had attended NOAC three times in the past, but for various reasons I had missed the last two conferences. I was excited about going to this conference, and I went there looking for some direction in my spiritual quest. The theme of the conference was “As I Run This Race,” based on Hebrews 11, and 12. The text chosen for the three day Bible study was Hebrews 12:1-2:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

As I thought about the great cloud of witnesses who went before me, including the Anabaptist martyrs, and the cloud of witnesses behind me who were looking for a model with which to mold their own faith, I became acutely aware of the cloud of witnesses surrounding my presence there at the conference. There I sat in the midst of more than a thousand older adults who had been running the race for many years and who were preparing to hand off the baton to the next generation. I became overwhelmed by that presence, and I finally knew where to find this God whom I sought so desperately. He is just where the New Testament writers said he is. He is in this body, the Body of Christ, which we call the church. He is in that cloud of witnesses who grace my presence from the past, the future, as well as in the present church. For the first time in many years, I felt at home. At last, I sensed that feeling of safety that I used to find at Sunday evening services as I laid my head against my father when I was a boy.

The old questions with which I struggled no longer seemed quite so important. Although my quest is not over, I have joined the great stream of those who have set their mark on the high calling in Christ Jesus. I have re-discovered the center of my faith, and my gyroscope has settled down. I still have many doubts, and I still want to know more. Our God is so vast and so great that we will never really understand him as we run this race. But I have, along with Bunyan’s “Christian,” again caught the vision of the Celestial City.

At Lake Junaluska in a Methodist facility, listening to Baptist, Presbyterian, and Brethren teachers and preachers, I began to sense God’s presence anew. But it was simply being in the company of that great cloud of witnesses that brought my faith into new focus. As the old spiritual says, “Guide my feet while I run this race, for I don’t want to run this race in vain.” Amen and Amen!