This I Believe...

Better late than never: On Friday, in the spirit of NPR's "This I Believe," the RevGalBlogPals challenged bloggers to share five things that they believe. Here are five of mine, in no particular order:

Five Things I Believe

1. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

2. Living in the leap -- taking risks, daring to be wrong, daring to be vulnerable, daring to be a little crazy, walking by faith and not by sight -- is how we really live our Christianity into the world, and the best adventure there is.

3. Coffee and chocolate are both proofs that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

4. A lot of religious conflict really has less to do with theology and more to do with psychology -- in other words, I think that how we as individuals work out our human spiritual impulses is largely hard-wired into our brains. I think that fundamentalism (which really isn't a mindset limited to matters of religion anyway) is a function of personality, not of theology. Which is why I have come to believe that arguing theology with fundamentalists in order to try and persuade them to change their minds is about as effective as arguing with diabetics in order to try and recalibrate their pancreatic functioning. It just isn't going to work. I think those of us not of that mindset could better spend our time proactively stating and explaining our own beliefs and practices, for the sake of seeking people who because of their own psychological makeup need the kind of spirituality, the way of thinking about God and our relationship with God and expressing that in life and worship, that we have to offer.

5. There needs to be a re-Reformation in my own tradition, not in terms of theology per se, but of practice -- we need to take both corporate worship and individual spiritual practice much more seriously, and pay much more attention to the spiritual formation of our people. I am absolutely convinced of this. I think this topic is exponentially more important than anything my denomination tends to yak about at its various assemblies and in its house organs.