Two weeks ago, we looked at this half-truth that said there are many ways to God. We said that is true if you mean that there are many ways to experience God. We said it is true if you mean that many religions have insight into God, but that ultimately if Jesus is who he said he is, if he is the Son of God, the Messiah, then He is the ONLY way to God. As He described, He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. That’s what Jesus says.
Last week, we looked at the half-truth that you don’t need to go to Church or need any Church. There is a growing belief that the Church is unnecessary to connect with God. We looked at three reasons we need the Church. We need the Church as a place in which we can serve others and discover our spiritual gifts. We need the Church to be encouraged and supported by other people’s faith. We need the Church because it is a visible sign of God’s vision in the world to draw all people and all nations to Himself.
Today we want to confront this half-truth that all religions are the same, deep down. Now, that is true if you mean that all religions struggle with, and attempt to answer, the same questions. They struggle with questions such as what is the very foundation of reality. Does God exist? If God exists, what is God’s nature? Is there one God or many gods? If God exists, what does he expect of us? Does he expect anything of us? What happens to us after we die? These and many other questions are questions that various religions attempt to answer. Religion is a set of beliefs that attempt to explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things human beings should spend their time doing.
But not all religions are the same, and even a very cursory look at the different religions reveal that they are not the same. They answer these questions in very different ways, before we look at the different answers, first let me explain why this half-truth can be a problem.
One, it doesn’t allow us to engage in real dialogue with others who have different beliefs. It creates a kind of inauthenticity. It is ok to disagree with others. Relationships don’t depend upon agreeing on everything, but if we gloss over the differences then real conversation and dialogue won’t take place. Another problem with just saying all religions are the same is that it makes us think there are no real answers to the questions that religions seek to answer. So we give up pondering, or asking, those deep questions. We think, if all religions are the same, we might as well argue over and discuss politics, or cooking, or sports than to talk about and reflect on the most important subject of all.
So it is important for us to come to the full truth: all religions wrestle with the same questions, but all religions do not come to the same answers to those questions. In fact, religions often come to very different answers to those questions. To point out the difference, let’s start with one of the basic questions religions try to answer, and we will come back to how OUR faith answers this question. The most basic question religions ask are about God. Who is God? What is God’s nature? Is there one God or many gods?
I am over simplifying this a bit. It can get tricky in describing other religions, which goes to show that they do think differently. Some religions would say you can’t even know anything about God. They claim, there is a God, but you really can’t know anything about God. Then there are other religions that say there is no God at all. There is no supernatural, only human, ethics. This would include Unitarianism, Confucianism, and secular humanism. Since they don’t believe there is a God, they don’t pursue a relationship with God, but simply try to figure out how to live. Some religions say there are many gods, that all creation is equal with divinity. This is called pantheism. Some types of Hinduism would fall into that category. Other religions say there is one God. Judaism and Islam fall into this category. But even in saying that, they have very different conceptions of what that means. Judaism says God can be known in a personal way, and Islam says that is impossible. Again, there are many more nuances to these than I am describing, but my point is this: on even the most basic question, all religions are not the same.
For the rest of our time today I’ll explain the Christian answer to the question “who is God?” and one incredibly important implication of that question.
Christianity says there is one God consisting of three divine persons. There are three persons in One God. What we are saying is, at the very heart of reality, there is a community of three persons. There is God the Father who created you, God the Son who died for you, and God the Spirit who lives within you. All three persons are eternal, and all three are God. At the heart of all reality is the Trinity.
Today is Trinity Sunday and we celebrate this supreme mystery of our faith. A mystery is a truth we cannot fully understand. It is a truth we can know something about, but not everything. The Holy Trinity is the most complicated teaching of our faith, but it should not be surprising that to talk about God, and who he is, is complicated. If God is God, then it means we should find his reality very surprising, difficult to explain, and impossible to completely comprehend.
The Trinity is like the family. Your family is one family but it has more than one member. In a family, a husband and a wife love each other. And then out of that love for each other, a child is produced. There is one family, but three persons in the family. God the Father loves God the Son, and the Holy Spirit precedes or is a result of that love, which has no beginning and no end.
Since God is a community of love, it means that the highest purpose is to love. By love, we are to do what God has been doing from all eternity: That is, we should defer to God and others, we should adore God and respect others, we should serve God and others. Love is primarily a verb not a noun.
God, from all eternity, is a community of love. Each person in the Trinity loves and cares for the others through mutual, self-giving love. For God to love, he must have somebody to love. Love can exist only in a relationship. You can love your mom because your mom exists. If you are a parent, you can love your children because they exist. You can’t love someone who doesn’t exist. If an un-personal God had created the world, and its inhabitants, such a God would not in his essence be love. . . power and greatness possibly, but not love.
But God is Trinity. God in his essence is a community of self-giving love. And because God is love, self-centeredness in others drives you crazy. It is also why our own self-centeredness can never fulfill us or bring us true satisfaction. At the very nature of all reality is love, and a loving community, the Trinity. And when we focus only on ourselves, and what we want, we are fighting against the very nature of reality and how the world works. That is to say, we are fighting against God himself when we are self-centered.
God is the opposite of self-centered. God did not need to create the world because he was lonely, or he wanted someone to worship him, or needed someone to worship him out of joy. God didn’t create the world to get joy, but to give joy. It is out of God’s goodness and graciousness that the world exists and that we exist.
God created the world out of love, but then something went wrong. God gave us free will of whether to love him back with one simple commandment. The first human beings chose to be self-centered rather than loving God, and we have been making the same choice ever since. As a result of that self-centeredness, relationships have been broken as everyone tends towards selfishness. The result of that selfishness is chaos. And God could have just left us all on our own. Instead, out of love, his Son came into the world to show us what it means to truly love God, and love others, so he laid down his life by submitting to the cross.
Then Jesus ascended into heaven, but he didn’t leave us all alone. God sent His Spirit into the world to guide us and lead us through the trials and tribulations of life, to help us cut through the confusion of life. The Spirit dwells within our hearts and souls. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
This is our faith. It is beautiful, isn’t it? It presents an image of reality that we want to be true. We want love to be at the very foundation of reality. And the Good News is that it is.
God is an eternal exchange of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is a community of love. And his destiny for each of us is to share in that exchange of love, to be drawn into that community of love, to swim in that ocean of love and self-giving. That is His will and his destiny for us.
To really enter into this reality, we must live it. So here is my question this week: what do you need to do to stop being self-centered and love God and love others? My guess is that in simply asking that question, you know what it is. For example, what do you do to make life about you?
For tomorrow, just tomorrow would you put that self-centered thing aside? Maybe for you it is that you have to have the remote control. Maybe you have to have a certain food for dinner. Maybe you want to go home and emotionally check out when your spouse really needs to talk to you. Students, maybe you can help clean up after dinner tomorrow rather than run to your room. Husbands, maybe you could help clean up after dinner tomorrow rather than run to your room.
I don’t know what it is, but for just tomorrow, let’s work on our self-centeredness and be other centered, so we can enter into the love of the Trinity that is God.
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