God made everything that is, both seen and unseen. God takes pleasure in all of creation, especially in the lives of humans. God is relational and desires to know and be known and loves all people, whoever they are. God values freedom both for the sake of human flourishing and for the authentic giving and receiving of love among humans. For this reason, God gave humans free will, but humans used their free will to choose self-interest over God. As a result of resisting God, who, as the Creator, is the source of all life, humans caused death to enter the world. The story of our salvation is the story of God’s deliverance for humanity out of this death. 

 

God has been continually active in the world since the beginning, culminating in the incarnation of Jesus, who is God in the flesh, fully human and fully divine. Jesus showed humanity how we were meant to live, which is to say, what it means to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In his death, Jesus experienced the full extent of human sinfulness. In his resurrection, Jesus broke the power of sin and death for humanity. The resurrected Jesus will return again to finish the reversal of death to life for humanity and all of creation. The life that Jesus won back for us is not just for some distant day in the future; that resurrection life is meant for us to receive and enact in the lives we live today through the Holy Spirit. For this reason, we can live at peace with ourselves and seek to make peace in our world.

 

The Holy Spirit, who is God, is always active and ministering to people, but God’s love is non-coercive, which means we must be attentive and listening for the Spirit in order to discern what God is doing and saying. The Holy Spirit empowers us to live as God intends and makes the Church’s mission and ministry effective. The Church is an agent of the Kingdom of God, which is the fulfillment of God’s love and justice. Brought to completion on a future day, that love and justice are made known now by the Church through the Holy Spirit. 

 

The purpose of the Church is to worship God, to spiritually nourish its members, and to be an agent of God’s love and justice in the world. Worship is an act of devotion to God, centered on reading and proclaiming the Word and through administering the Sacraments. The spiritual nourishment of the Church occurs through prayer, caring for one another, acts of spiritual devotion, and discipleship. God’s love and justice are enacted, in both word and deed, through the Church’s mission, especially to the vulnerable and disempowered. 

 

Ultimately, my faith does not rest in the above statements alone but in the person about whom I believe they describe. I am a Christian because I have been deeply touched by the life and witness of Jesus, who gives me daily life and hope and who I believe can offer life and hope to the whole world.