Evolve

A number of years ago, I had a bumper sticker on my truck that had an Icthus with feet and it said, Evolve. I put that on my truck to represent other ways of thinking. What I got plenty of was unwanted gospel tracts stuck under my windshield wipers. Those not so well-intentioned Christians (I assume they were) were missing the point. We must evolve or we are frozen in time, in essence, dead.

The whole point was to encourage people to think in other ways. The actual theory of evolution as it was originally proposed has lost most of its favor in scientific circles. That being said, everything evolves, grows and changes. Our faith must be a process, an ever evolving process/discovery of love. This is how to have a living faith, to evolve to new levels of love, of hospitality, of caring.

It is scary to evolve, I get that. A friend once said, “the only people who like change are babies with dirty diapers”. Sadly, that former friend could not, himself, deal with change at all. At least he was honest. My profession of social work is ever evolving. In fact, as a professor of same, I am supposed to help move that evolution forward with writing and research.

Our faith is the same way. As I see it, one of, perhaps the leading cause of problems in the Church is the fear and discomfort that comes from evolving. In churches, power and control seem to be more important than growing in the Spirit. In the 70s, a bumper sticker said, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”. Does it really? Each time we read scripture we should be finding something new, something to move us forward in a faith that should never be stagnant.

A living and evolving faith is one that is becoming more and more inclusive. When we get stuck and become afraid to see things another way, to stay in our comfort zone, our faith has in essence become dead. This does not mean that traditions are not important,to remind us of matters of faith. The Eucharist, baptism, and corporate worship do indeed matter and always will. It is how we think of those things that must grow, must evolve.

When I first came to the church the Lord’s Supper was a bit of hard little cracker and a sip of grape juice. Over time, its meaning evolved to the body and blood of Christ and then on to taking in the body and blood so that I become the living body and blood of Christ to the world and then, being that body and blood, I am to do as Jesus did and feed the world with my presence. That is evolution of faith.

Oh, and it is kinda scary. To move beyond all that some churches taught me to see God in new ways is a leap of faith itself. The proof however, is that my love for myself, my neighbor and my God has grown and continues to grow. Come with me, evolve and be part of a vary large and very good universe.

TMM

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