First, We Belong
This week, I went on a solo retreat to a cabin in the woods for the purpose of telling myself and God that I am working on a book. I am someone who needs symbol and ritual to make things real, and getting away for a couple of days to cement that intention was profoundly helpful for me. I am sharing an excerpt of what I wrote with you here. It’s in its roughest form right now, but I am hopeful that these words will be part of something bigger that has to do with the topic of healing and belonging within the Body of Christ. If anything stands out to you or nettles you, would you please let me know in the comments? Your input will help inform the direction in which I write. Thank you for the gift of your readership, friends. May the peace of Christ go with you today and each day.
The house of belonging does not belong to any particular church or denomination. It belongs to God, and no one has the power or authority to keep us from our true inheritance of belonging—an unshakeable identity that has been ours since before we were born. So come in. The door is already open. This belonging will not ask us to wipe our shoes on the mat before coming inside or to clean up and look nice. Instead, Belonging takes us by the hand and says, “Come in! Let’s take a look at you. Where does it hurt? What do you need?”
After all, Jesus never made people clean up or get their act together before approaching him in their longing and need. He never asked anyone to first recite the ten commandments from memory nor was he holding a checklist of correct doctrine buzz words in his hand to ensure that whoever was asking of him was worthy of his healing and attention. Jesus cleansed and purified, healed and transformed through the power of his presence. Because he was unshakeable in his identity as the Beloved, he didn’t worry about who might contaminate him with their uncleanness or bad reputation. People who came to him for healing were healed, even if they if not believe all the right things just yet.
Jesus knew the truth: correct belief is a poor substitute for true belonging. A person can know and understand, believe and defend all the “right” things yet still remain a stranger in the house of God. Consider God’s words to His chosen people, spoken through the prophet Isaiah:
“These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”
–Isaiah 29:13
True religion comes from knowing and loving the One to whom we belong, then turning around and offering that belonging to others. When we make perfect belief the criteria for belonging, we miss the point of the gospel. The gospel ceases to become good news when it ceases to astound us with its lavishness, with its indiscriminate choosing of those beloveds of whom God says, “They belong here.”
Please hear me: knowing, believing, and loving the truth matters greatly. We do not want to be a self-deceived people who go about deceiving others because we are unversed in the theological truths we espouse as Christians. Yet we so often forget that the Truth is a person in whom we believe, and that what matters most is belonging to the one who promises, “Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). In both the family of God as well as our own families, imperfect though they may be, this pattern holds true: first we belong, then we believe. No one expects an infant to say “excuse me” upon burping or to politely ask for more milk when she is hungry, or to say “thank you” after she is fed to prove that she belongs in her family. That would be absurd—she already belongs. Learning family values such as good manners, politeness, and gratitude comes much later. It takes time and maturity for a child to embrace his family’s beliefs and values as wisdom by which to live.
Consider what happens when we change just one word of the Apostle’s Creed, a time-tested declaration of faith that is still used worldwide to outline the basics of Christian belief. I know the power of proclaiming “I believe” with a group of fellow Christians, and affirm its excellence as a creed. I am in no way attempting to alter it, but rather to deepen its meaning for those of us who have grown over-familiar with its wording:
I belong to God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth
and to Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.I belong to the Holy Spirit,
to the holy catholic Church,
to the communion of saints,
to the forgiveness of sins,
to the resurrection of the body,
and to life everlasting.Amen.
As God’s beloved children, we not only believe—we belong. We belong to the Trinity, to the bigger story of God as told through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We belong to the work of the Spirit in the global and local church, and we belong to the saints who have gone before us and are cheering us on in our faith, even now. We belong to the miracle of forgiveness—both given and received—and we belong to the resurrected life that forgiveness affords. We belong to life eternal, and “no power of hell nor scheme of man” can take that from us.