The Original God Statement (1995)
God is eternally good and fair. If God were not good and fair, then I would have no interest in knowing or pleasing God. If God is good, then God is not cruel, impatient, or egoistic. If God is fair, then God would not have established one true religion in a time and location removed from vast portions of humanity. I believe that a good and fair God’s essential truth and love are equally available to all of us at all times through immanent presence and transcendent longing. I believe that God intervenes only through this transcendence and immanence and our incarnating of God’s will.
I believe that God is a mystery and that our primary life responsibility is to seek God and to live out God as best we can. I believe that our best tool of discernment is love. While our understanding will never be complete and our living out will never be perfect, we are called to continue to strive towards God. I believe that in our moments of loving understanding, we share God’s eternity, and that is our salvation. I have no expectation of a personal afterlife. I feel privileged to love and attempt to live out God in this life, and that is enough. It’s not about me; it is about God. I believe that we are in the process of unraveling the mystery of God on personal, societal, and global levels by increasing our intellectual understanding and capacity to love and by experiencing glimpses of God in mystical union and heartfelt devotion and trying to incorporate those mystical glimpses, intellectual insights, and capacities to love into our living of life. We shared with God the desire for the homecoming of the Creator and creation.
I believe that organized religions say more about man’s reaching out to God than God’s reaching out to man. I recognize that organized religions were formed and are sustained by imperfect men with biases and agendas; therefore, I do not believe in the inerrancy of any holy book or decree. Man does sometimes get it right, so I think that searching one or more organized religions for the beauty, truth, or peace therein is a worthwhile endeavor that may supplement our private, essential relationship with God. Specific to Christianity, I believe that Jesus was a man filled with God’s goodness who understood and lived out God. To the extent that Jesus’ thoughts and actions were more in keeping with God’s than our thoughts and actions, Jesus was more Godlike than we are and should be emulated. I think we are all children of God who have the potential to lead our lives in Godlike ways. I believe that God is bigger than the world yet pervades the world with invitation and presence and challenges us to incarnate God’s will in the world.