CREDO

    It is no doubt too early to accurately, certainly fully, reflect about the CREDO (Clergy Reflection, Education, Discernment Opportunity) Conference I participated in all of last week, even though the leaders want us to immediately begin doing just that: reflect. I will, in a few days, after my brain comes back to life. It was information overload but it was a wonderful and important opportunity for me to think about and make plans for my continued and future ministry and eventual retirement.

    I have been reflecting not on CREDO but on credo, the Latin word which means “I believe” from which the word “creed” is derived. The CREDO people translate credo not as “I believe” but rather as “I give my heart to this”. And is that not what faith, belief, is really all about? It is about that to which I give my heart: not my mind, not my consent, not anything other than my heart.

    That is not to say my consent and my mind are not important. It is to say that what is most important in my life and my faith is that to which I give my heart. At CREDO we believed that the goals we set and the plans we made were vital for our future life and ministry. We were all enjoined and encouraged to give our hearts to those plans for that is the only way those plans will ever become realities. Otherwise they will remain only wonderful and thoughtful words written down and no more.

    Belief in God, like a belief in our goals, is more than a set of doctrines to which we subscribe. We recite the Creed. We say “I believe” or “we believe” in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit and more. That is well and good. But faith must be lived to truly be faith. Our faith in our God, in Jesus, in the Spirit must come alive in us. That living must come not because of some intellectual assent to some set of truths but because it comes from the heart that desires to live out the meaning of those truths.

    If our faith is not lived from the heart, what we live out will certainly be less than what it could be, just like those goals I set for myself. We can follow the tenets and commands of faith not out of love but out of fear. To the extent that we do is to understand how meaningful it is for us. For the degree to which we give our heart to something or someone is truly a measure of how important that something or someone is to us.

    While it is important how God, for instance, measures our faith, what is more important is how we measure it. How others judge us is important but not that important because they may be wrong. It is up to each of us to ask ourselves, “Do I really give my whole heart to God or do I give only some of it?” No one can answer that question for us because no one else knows. But we do.

    In the final analysis it also does not matter what others think about what we believe. Belief is personal. Thus, no matter how much we insist we truly believe what we say we believe when we recite the words of the Creed, if we do not give our heart to that faith, our words are merely words. We may have a theologian’s critical understanding of each word. We may be able to recite it from memory. But when we give our heart to what we believe, that belief becomes part of us. It drives everything we say and do. It truly drives us.      WJP