If required to summarize my deepest conviction in a single sentence, it would be something like this: I believe that God is more taken with the agony of the earth than with the ecstasy of heaven. From this root grow seven related stems on which the prayers that follow depend for nourishment.

First, redemption is for the world, not from the world. Among our most pressing needs is a fleshly faith, one that embraces rather than brackets history, to overcome the crippling effect of disembodied spirituality. In the simple but profound complaint of theologian James McClendon: “We do not believe that the God we know will have to do with things.” Which is why the psalmist’s assertion—I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living—is such an integrating factor in my imagination.

Second, vital faith is always personal but never merely private. Saying that faith has a “social dimension” is redundant at best. Forgiveness is not the ultimate consumer acquisition. The grace-imparted soul does not rejoice in itself but in the repairing of relationships, what in the early rabbinic tradition was named tikkun olam (repair of the world). As Jesus said, “The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (Luke 7:47). Even in the Pauline pastoral letters the prohibition against stealing, and the requirement of honest work, spring not from civic virtue but “so as to have something to share with the needy” (Ephesians 4:28).

Third, doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God are not separate statements but three ways of saying the same thing. Scripture knows nothing of our segregation of material from spiritual realities. The disarming of the heart is intertwined with the disarming of the nations. Long before Karl Marx made the case for economic determination of human choice, Jesus said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34). In Luke’s account of the healing of the paralytic (5:17-26),  the religious leaders charge Jesus with blasphemy for forgiving sins. To which he replied, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?”

Fourth, the God of the Bible is most attuned to the
places where creation is battered, bruised and broken. The opposite is true for the gods now enthroned. Which is why—for us no less than the ancients— idolatry remains the central problem. Which is also why our doxology—our heavenward gaze, our praise and adoration of God—is implicitly a critique of the ways things are on the earth and puts us at odds with every dominant power. As Karl Barth observed, “To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” The flip side of this assertion is that if we are to overhear the Word, we, too, must locate ourselves in sustained and compassionate proximity to those broken places. Being present where
the world is falling apart is an essential spiritual discipline long before it becomes a question of ethics.

Fifth, we need a spirituality that will convict and not merely convince. As T.S. Eliot quipped, we know too much but are convinced of too little. And everyone knows that when all is said and done, a lot more things are said than done. The Latin word credo, from which we get the English word creed, means “I give my heart to.” Vital faith is a bet-your-life proposition. Faith is not belief in spite of the evidence, Clarence Jordan wrote. Rather, faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences. Theological conviction often raise blisters on your feet and calluses on your hands. Imagine what it would be like if the story of Zacchaeus’ confession of faith (Luke 19:8) guided sermons on what it means to be saved.

Sixth, the quest for a more imaginative theological vocabulary pushes me beyond inclusive images for God toward expansive ones. No doubt, male language for God is predominant in the Bible. All the more interesting, then—and suggestive—that a host of other images, including non-human ones, are present there. The risk of an anthropomorphic boundary on theological speech—whether male or female—is that it installs our hungry little human egos as the point of reference in the unfolding drama of redemption.

Finally, I believe the text is potent. The Bible’s passion is not so much to assert its own authority as it is to retext the Word made fresh in every age. Reasserting the central role of Scripture for worship and prayer will not result from orthodoxy’s protective insistence, of course. It will only happen as ordinary folk, like you and me, find a lively and spirited conversation is to be had there.