Dear All,
I hope you are well. I’ve been reflecting again recently on my understanding of God as a progressive Christian and I’ve found myself once more returning to the work of one of my favourite theologians, John Shelby Spong. If I may, I’d like to share once again one of his key thoughts about our experience of and response to God in his lecture titled ‘Jesus for the non-religious’. I respect that it will not be everything we might wish to reflect on and say about how we understand God but I think there’s much here that’s worth sharing and considering and I hope it will be a blessing to you:
If God is the source of life, as I believe God is, then… God is present in you, and me, and in the whole created order. And if God is the source of life, then the only way you worship God is by living. Living fully. Sharing life, giving life away, not being afraid, wandering out of the certain into the uncertain, out of the known into the unknown.
If God is the source of love, as I believe God is, then the only way you can worship God is by loving. Not by being right, but by loving. By loving wastefully. You love because love is what you have to do, not because somebody deserves the love. You love wastefully.
If God is the ground of being, as I believe God is, then the only way you and I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that we can be, in the infinite variety of our humanity. No matter what the human difference is, you have something to offer in your own being. Nobody else can offer what you have to offer, and the only way you can worship God is by daring to be all that you can be, and not be bound by the fears of yesterday.
In these uncertain times, I pray that we will all experience the reality of God, find comfort and help in his loving embrace and seek as much as we can ‘to live fully’, ‘love wastefully’ and ‘daringly be’ all we can be and by the grace of God, offer all we can to others.
With much love,
