Liberating Word

In the beginning God …

The Hebrew and Christian scripture begins with the story of Creation. At the dawn of another new year, perhaps that should be our starting point as well. There are many lessons to be drawn from this ancient story.

The insistence of fundamentalists that these words be taken literally would be humorous if fundamentalists of any brand had the slightest sense of irony. Perhaps that is the difference between us and them: we don’t take ourselves or anything so seriously that we can’t honestly and courageously engage it. Nothing is so sacred that it cannot be questioned, challenged and earnestly examined. That includes the one we may call God and the words we may call scripture.

Beginning with the creation song in Genesis demands that we ask questions that we will ask all our lives. In the beginning God … There is no introduction, no preparation, no explanation to this one referred to in the English version of the story as “God.” Without apology or apologetics, you either begin there or you don’t, believe or not.

Accepting the possibility that there is something, or someone, that precedes existence itself is the first tenet of all religions. It is something we accept and trust by faith because it cannot be proven. If you could prove it as a scientific fact then faith would not be required, which is another irony fundamentalists seem to miss. By demanding that creationism be taught in public schools, they are trying to give away to secular society the foundation tenet of their faith. Faith doesn’t concern itself so much with the how of creation but with the Who and, perhaps, the why. Those are questions that science cannot address.

In this new year, let us liberate our faith from the mundane questions like “how?” and ask more profound questions that might lead us to discover our life’s meaning and purpose. Only fundamentalists miss the fact that, while answers change, the questions are what endure because the questions are eternal. Let this be the year we have the courage to ask any question.

Blessings,

Michael
President, Hope for Peace & Justice