Sandy Brunsting – Unfundamentalist

My faith journey has changed dramatically.

I grew up in a fairly traditional mainline church and never actually gave my faith and worldview much thought. It wasn’t until I got married and had my own family that I really bought into it.

And then we ran into this situation at church. It was distressing and messy and we parted ways with our former congregation about ten years ago. For a long time I felt like an exile. It caused a crisis of faith, which, in retrospect, was very healthy.

Since then, my perspective has changed (and grown, I hope). I have come to realize how little we can actually know God. The more I learn about God, the more I see how unknowable he actually is. You can’t put God in a box; as soon as you do, he’s not God anymore but an image of your own making.

I have also come to see Jesus as absolutely central to faith. Without him, it doesn’t make sense. He is love and compassion and truth, he is resurrection in all the dead places in life, he is inclusive and kind to outcasts and to the outcast places of my heart. And I am sure he is way bigger and much more inclusive than we can imagine.

I have read numerous books and listened to many talks from teachers and authors of all kinds. I have noticed that some of the best teaching, and some of the worst, have been from Christian sources. Influential guides on my journey have been writers, spiritual leaders, mystics, and scientists, who have in common a passion for truth, wisdom, love for humans and… [Read more…] about Finding Faith Again

Several years ago, after going through a very troubling church experience, I went through a time of intense examination of what I actually believed. I had come to a place where I needed to figure out if my faith was real or if it was just an institutional construct. At one point, I read four or five books in about a month in which the authors either went through a significant season of doubt, or they deconstructed their traditional way of doing church and rebuilt it into a more authentic expression. Those books, and the friends who traveled that difficult road with us, were instrumental in reshaping the landscape of my faith. What I believe now looks very different, more expansive and much more inclusive, than it did before.

God hasn’t changed, obviously, but the way I think about him has. My view of him is bigger, less traditionally boxed-in, and contains more mystery. While I believe that the best way to understand him is to look at Jesus, I also believe that he reveals himself a lot more widely than I ever believed before.

For example, if God is the one and only god and he created the whole universe, then nothing in all of creation is beyond him. He is the Source, the Creator and the Energy inherent in everything, and he reveals himself and can be found everywhere (Deut 6:4, Gen 1:1). And also, we can get to know him, at least in part, by just looking at the world around us in all its beauty, complexity and intricacy(Rom 1:20).

If God created all of us in his image,… [Read more…] about One God