Rediscovering What I Believe

Today, in con­junc­tion with Blog Your Bless­ings Sun­day, it is my extreme honor and delight to present the first of what I hope will be a series of arti­cles by Guest Authors. And it is my priv­i­lege to intro­duce you to my friend and first Guest Author, Robert W. Mattheis, Bishop Emer­i­tus of the Evan­gel­i­cal Lutheran Church in Amer­ica (ELCA), Sierra Pacific Synod.

I first met Pas­tor Bob, as we knew him then, in 1974 when he was called to serve as pas­tor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, the con­gre­ga­tion to which I belonged and served on the music staff for many years. In 1994, St. Paul’s loss was the Sierra Pacific Synod’s gain when Pas­tor Bob was elected to the office of and became Bishop Bob, over­see­ing 215 ELCA con­gre­ga­tions from Porter­ville, Cal­i­for­nia north to the Ore­gon bor­der and as far east as Elko, Nevada. He retired in 2002, and con­tin­ues to reside here in Lodi. He is now active in Way of Christ Com­mu­nity, described as “a unique and evolv­ing com­mu­nity look­ing to live, believe, wor­ship and learn in a new way,” which is led by his daugh­ter and son-in-law, Pas­tors Amy Jo and Peter Mattheis-Holmquist.

I asked Bishop Bob to be my first Guest Author for many reasons.

First of all, as you will see, he is a gifted writer which is not sur­pris­ing because he is also a dynamic and pow­er­ful preacher who deliv­ered many mem­o­rable ser­mons dur­ing the 20 years that he was our pas­tor. He is not afraid to ask ques­tions — includ­ing the most dif­fi­cult and con­fus­ing — and I find that not just a refresh­ing, but an essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic, espe­cially among church lead­ers. On a per­sonal note, he is one of the most patient and com­pas­sion­ate per­sons I have ever known and he holds a spe­cial place in the Siess family’s hearts as he not only mar­ried Big­Bob and me, but bap­tized our boys, presided at my father’s memo­r­ial ser­vice, and par­tic­i­pated in many other fam­ily mile­stones with us over the years. He has been and con­tin­ues to be a bless­ing in our lives!

Please make Bishop Bob feel wel­come by leav­ing a com­ment after you read his thought-provoking arti­cle! Agree? Dis­agree? Why?

Redis­cov­er­ing What I Believe

By Robert W. Mattheis

Faith is a life long jour­ney. It is not once formed and for­ever set. It is reshaped by the events of our lives and the events of the world in which we live those lives. This has, at least, been the expe­ri­ence of my life in faith and hope. Where I am in faith and prac­tice today is not where I expect to be tomor­row or where I have been in my yes­ter­day. Faith evolves as I inter­act with the Spirit and the world around me.

Such a real­ity leads me to pay atten­tion to my life every day. The good and the bad. The desir­able and unde­sir­able. All are a part of who I am and who I am becom­ing. It is a jour­ney marked by change and excite­ment; also by some trep­i­da­tion and yearn­ing for the secu­rity of the past. It is where I am and where I want to be.

Where I am today is not famil­iar. I believe. What I believe, how­ever, is still com­ing into view. As I have pushed and probed the emerg­ing land­scape, it has seemed that the best place to begin is by defin­ing what I do not believe. Some con­vic­tions I have held dear at some point in my life; oth­ers I have always car­ried with a bit of dis­com­fort. I begin.

Cre­ation and the Dom­i­na­tion System

The Apos­tles Creed begins “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Cre­ator of Heaven and Earth.” I have recited that creed, often thought­fully; many times I have repeated the word with­out giv­ing thought to the mean­ing or con­tent. The Bible speaks about God as the Cre­ator of “the heav­ens and the earth.” Cer­tainly they came about by some means. Lack­ing sci­en­tific insight and sophis­ti­cated sci­en­tific instru­ments, the peo­ple who gave us the Bible attrib­uted the real­ity of the world around them to the God they wor­shiped. As have many cul­tures. The Hebrew/Christian tra­di­tion is unique in that the world does not result from divine vio­lence. Rather it is the inten­tional cre­ation of a Divine Being who also seeks to be wor­shiped and obeyed. The creed reflects this bib­li­cal con­vic­tion that the god of the Hebrews is the cre­ator of the world. That sense of God’s cre­ation is then tied to a divine order of cre­ation which places God at the top of the pyra­mid sup­ported at suc­ces­sive lev­els by males, females, chil­dren and the rest of creation.

The scrip­ture tells us that har­mony results when that divine order is fol­lowed. That is, when men obey God, women obey men and chil­dren obey both men and women. It is the dom­i­na­tion sys­tem that assumes gen­i­talia are a source of wis­dom con­fer­ring the right to dom­i­nate those on the level below.

I no longer believe these things. I believe that the world, the uni­verse or uni­verses, came into being through a series of inci­dents which may or may not have been designed and guided by a Divine mind. The bib­li­cal uni­verse does not begin to com­pre­hend the scope of the galac­tic sys­tems of which earth is a small, small part. The world is here and we are a part of it. It is nat­ural to want to explain how it came to be. In the pre­sci­en­tific age it was faith in a super­nat­ural being that explained these things. Today we search the outer reaches of our galac­tic sys­tem with space based tele­scopes and space­craft sent to other plan­ets. We can­not apply a bib­li­cal tem­plate from the first cen­tury to our con­tem­po­rary situation.

In ages past sys­tems of faith pro­vided the struc­ture that sup­ported the dom­i­na­tion sys­tem. Gen­e­sis makes it sim­ple: God. Male humans. Female humans. Their chil­dren and then the non-human world. The Hebrew/Christian cul­ture has inter­preted this order of cre­ation in such a way that it sup­ports the dom­i­na­tion of females by males. This under­stand­ing, rein­forced by extend­ing dom­i­na­tion to God appointed Kings has resulted in untold suf­fer­ing for the human family.

I no longer believe in a divine cre­ation or the dom­i­na­tion sys­tem that grew out of it. I choose rather to cel­e­brate the gift of the world, a world that is both won­drous and awful. Won­drous in it’s beauty and diver­sity, in it’s resources and life giv­ing eco­log­i­cal sys­tems; awful in it’s earth­quakes, tor­na­does, hur­ri­canes, floods and other destruc­tive forces. To live in the world is to expe­ri­ence both it’s life and it’s death, and, it is to take respon­si­bil­ity for liv­ing wisely and com­pas­sion­ately as one fear­fully and won­der­fully made.

Are humans made in the image of God? That is our con­fes­sion. I do not believe it is our prac­tice. It is my obser­va­tion that we tend to believe that ‘peo­ple like us’ carry god’s image, while peo­ple in other lands, of other skin tones, lan­guages, reli­gions and cus­toms do not. As a nation we have been more than will­ing to do vio­lence to those who are our enemy in fact or in imag­i­na­tion. Chris­tians in this nation have mounted a pow­er­ful cam­paign against abor­tion because it sup­pos­edly takes the life of one cre­ated in the image of God. Yet we go to war and report body counts with pride. This his­tory of vio­lence is clearly reflected in the his­tory of Chris­ten­dom. When we do not believe peo­ple carry the image of God we feel jus­ti­fied in doing vio­lence against them.

I am in awe of this world and the human per­son, the human body and the cul­tures that have emerged. I do not need to have strict doc­tri­nal con­vic­tions about how it came into being. I eagerly con­sume infor­ma­tion regard­ing the ori­gin of the earth, solar sys­tem and galaxy as it
becomes avail­able. No, I don’t under­stand every­thing I read, nor do I need to do so.

At this point in my life I can recite the First Arti­cle of the Apos­tles Creed only with my fin­gers crossed. This does not absolve me from respon­si­ble engage­ment with my envi­ron­ment. My famil­iar­ity with Jesus and his ways leads me to ask impor­tant ques­tions as I inter­act with my world. As a con­sumer of non-renewable resources, what is my respon­si­bil­ity to future generations?

How do I live so that I value the lives of peo­ple in other nations, espe­cially third world nations, as much as I value peo­ple in this coun­try? What does it mean to fol­low Jesus who had “com­pas­sion on the mul­ti­tudes” as he fed the hun­gry crowds? The chal­lenge is to ask how I can be a respon­si­ble cit­i­zen of the world as I expe­ri­ence it in all of it’s com­plex­ity. What val­ues will guide my life in rela­tion to my fel­low inhab­i­tants on planet earth and to the planet itself? This, rather than doc­tri­naire, closed end state­ments about cre­ation, is where I find myself today.

It is enough for me to say that ‘cre­ation is.’ My task as a fol­lower of Jesus is to dis­cern what that means for me and the choices I have the priv­i­lege of making.

Prayer and Miracles

The Bible is a book of mir­a­cles. In the Hebrew Scrip­tures (Old Tes­ta­ment) we read of the mir­a­cle of Josephs dreams and ascen­dancy to power in Egypt. (Gen­e­sis 39) This is fol­lowed by the mir­a­cle of the ‘part­ing of the waters of the Red Sea (Exo­dus ) and later, the waters of Jor­dan river. God had the sun stand still for Joshua in order to kill more peo­ple. Ezekiel and Eli­jah, mirac­u­lously fed peo­ple with­out food, healed the sick and raised the dead. Daniel, walked harm­lessly in a lions den and a fiery fur­nace. Are we to believe that these events are lit­eral ren­di­tions of his­tor­i­cal events?

The New Tes­ta­ment is steeped in mir­a­cle from the “vir­gin birth” of Jesus to the res­ur­rec­tion. There are mir­a­cles of heal­ing the lame, blind and mute. Mir­a­cles of Jesus feed­ing huge crowds with a lunch box of bread and dried fish, even as he also raised the dead and was him­self restored to life, before he ascended into the heav­ens to be with God “some­where up there.” I am not now going to dis­sect each of these mir­a­cles as Bishop John Shelby Spong has done in his most recent book “Jesus for the Non-Religious.” I do need to say that the cred­i­bil­ity of these accounts has always been dif­fi­cult for me, even as I preached many ser­mons on those texts. The res­ur­rec­tion texts are per­haps most chal­leng­ing because they chal­lenge the assur­ance that there is a phys­i­cal res­ur­rec­tion for each of us. I have used the text of Lazarus’ res­ur­rec­tion in John 11 at count­less funeral sermons.

Yes, I’m a lawyer, so here’s the dis­claimer: The views expressed in this arti­cle are Bishop Bob’s and by pub­lish­ing them here, I am not nec­es­sar­ily endors­ing them in their entirety. Rather, I present his writ­ing here in the spirit of this blog’s name, Col­lo­quium, to inspire col­le­gial dis­course, debate and contemplation.

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