Father, forgive them, for they know not what they believe

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they believe.”

This attitude has kept the unity of Christ’s Body at bay for thousands of years, as if the gravest sin is to be unsure or to disagree. But of course, our understanding is certain and without question. And we let our belief drive us to convert, or argue, or defend…saying that we are defending God, as if God ever asked or needed to be defended, when in reality it is our deep, deep wound of uncertainty of all things outside of Christ that we are defending. We have built ourselves up as beings of ideas and doctrines.

There is nothing wrong with doctrine. There is nothing wrong with systematically coming to conclusions in what we believe. In fact, I would argue that we are not much without them, or rather, we have very little. But when those ideas, those conclusions that we ourselves have come to are held on the same level as, or even hold precedence over the reality of Christ being behind, above, in, and beyond all doctrine, whether that doctrine is right or wrong, we lose ourselves. We begin to fade…As if we were trying to take the deep laugh of joy and hold it in a jar, carrying it with us, forgetting that that laugh, that deepest thing, cannot be put in a jar, that jar can simply remind us of what is truly in, around, and beyond the jar and before we even dreamed up the process of understanding that deep laugh by trying to contain it.

There is something deep, and wonderful, and beautiful about the rhythm of the creeds. It holds us together.

But when we use doctrine, which so often turns to dogmatism (which is in itself a perversion of what was once the greatest “positive knowledge”), to mask our deep, deep wound of disunity, we are picking at scabs on the Body of Christ, trying to heal it, trying to heal ourselves and our own uncertainties, which we fearfully have no desire to admit to, and in doing so inhibit the Body from healing and functioning as the beautiful, magnificent and holy thing created for God and the world and each other. Not for us, but for our neighbor.

So, what truly holds us together is not anything we have the ability to make up, but something that created us. I am reminded of Rich Mullins singing, in reference to the Creed, “I did not make it, no it is making me.”

Father, have pity on us, for we know not what we believe. Forgive us, for we know not what we do to you and to each other and to ourselves. Heal us, for we cannot heal ourselves.