I am committed to First United Methodist Church of Salt Lake City. I will help, I will give what and where and when I can. But should I join? This essay is to find an answer.
I don't have much of a distinction between sacred and profane. Don't be fooled by the snark and bad jokes. I mean all of this quite sincerely.
Before making a choice, consider all the reasons you can. But the reason that should outweigh all others is what the consequence of the choice will be.
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
Rupertus Meldenius (But almost always misattributed to John Wesley)
This document deserves its own treatment, but I'm not spending that many words in an essay that's about so much else. The short answer is this: Sacramental Faithfulness is not a serious document and while I did learn some things, it's basically “garbage in, garbage out.”
Condemn no man for not thinking as you think. Let every one enjoy the full and free liberty of thinking for himself. Let every man use his own judgment, since every man must give an account of himself to God. Abhor every approach, in any kind or degree, to the spirit of persecution, if you cannot reason nor persuade a man into the truth, never attempt to force a man into it. If love will not compel him to come, leave him to God, the judge of all.
John Wesley
The most important departure I take from Methodist tradition is that I reject the Trinity. I believe that Jesus Christ, His dad, and the Holy Spirit, are separate beings. I don't recognize the Nicene Creed as authoritative; I see it as a failed attempt to create a theology that includes deification. I see it as blasphemy.
There's a long tradition of Christian scholars pointing out that the early Christian church was unitarian, complete with supporting scriptures and other documentation. They've been a small minority since Nicea, and I'm comfortable being part of that small minority.
John Wesley held that the Trinity was an essential part of Christianity and denounced Unitarian belief. I think that if he saw the same things I've seen, he would come around to my point of view. I could be wrong, and that's fine too. Regardless, we agree that Jesus is the Christ, our Savior, and that his Father is the God we worship above any other. We will all find out the whole truth eventually, hug it out, and then we will go back to singing.
There had better be hugs and singing.
This is my take. It's a lot of words so feel free to skip to the next section.
In Old Testament times, substantial confusion arose because Jesus and His dad had to speak out of the same mouth. Even if you read the Old Testament with this in mind, I don't think you can parse out who is saying what, because the authors themselves didn't always parse it out correctly. As soon as Christ is born, however, the ambiguity is removed. Jesus speaks of His father, and the Holy Spirit, in the third person.
If you live in the 18th Century, and the universe you inhabit is built from the essences of things and the relationships between those essences, then yes, you can build a Trinity and it works just fine. But it is the 21st Century, and we live in a universe made of objects, which are made of particles, which are made of wobbles in quantum fields. If this is the substrate on which our universe is built, a Trinity is not possible. There is no set of definitions you can choose for the verb “to be” and the adjective “the same” that allow a Trinity to “exist” without rendering existence meaningless. You can't add dimensions and make it possible. You can't plug it into Einstein's field equations and get a valid result. In our universe, The Trinity is inherently self-contradictory. (I could just say “the Aristotelian argument holds” but I'm indulging myself… thanks for hanging in with me.)
Jesus Christ has run the entire race: He began as a non-corporeal being, got a body basically the same way we did, lived as a mortal human just like us, died as we all will, got himself resurrected, and is now an exalted being. Jesus' dad, on the other hand, is immutable. He started out exalted and will be in the same state of exaltation through the end of time. The Holy Spirit is non-corporeal and will remain so until the end of this eternity. My explanation does raise questions but they are outside the scope of this essay. (In particular, anyone who asks me about the carnal implications of a physical God fathering a physical Son gets the same answer: I don't want to think about it.)
(Start reading again here)
The Atonement, in my belief, is infinite. Grace extends to literally everyone, eventually. This is controversial enough, but also core enough to my beliefs, that I'm not getting into it here. I also won't bring it up in church settings. I only share details with individuals, when moved upon by the spirit. You may ask me about it, but only if you have an open mind.
If you just want to tell me I'm wrong, or hear enough of my position to invalidate it, kindly fuck off.
That doesn't mean I believe in salvation by grace or any such nonsense. Jesus said that calling “Lord, lord” is not enough. He gave commandments for a reason; works clearly matter. Our actions have consequences and those matter. You have to do what you can.
A thoughtful reading of Matthew 20 will do more to prepare your heart for understanding this than anything I could write.
Tertullian eventually left the early Christians and joined the Montanists, not because he lost his faith, but because he recognized that there had been an apostasy. This is my understanding, anyway, and is the same reason I left the church of my youth: it claims divine authority, and yet its prophets consistently make wrong predictions and even wrong observations. (What do you call a prophet that's consistently wrong? Hmm…)
Forgive me if I've extrapolated past the end of my data set, but the pattern I see in the scriptures is that God calls a prophet to accomplish some specific task; an authority structure forms; and it apostatizes basically as soon as the prophet is gone. (Paul's lamentation about how people twist his words–“what will they say I said after I'm gone”–is endlessly amusing to me. Citation needed.)
As far as I can see, there are no institutions with any authentic divine mandate currently on the earth. I see no true prophets. What authority churches have, therefore, is the same authority all institutions have: that to which their members consent.
The whole concept of “having authority to baptize” breaks down if all the churches are apostate. Where did John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus, get his authority?
I guess this is still an open question for me.
(As I'm writing this, I feel my blood sugar dropping… I'll call it a draft and be back later.)