Statement of Faith

Statement of Faith
Rev. Douglas B. Olds
October 2017

From the ear's hearing the Revelation of Israel's Messiah in Scripture, and

Within the heart's experiences of the Holy Spirit, and

Through a Vision of God:

I align with the saints in Creator's intent--the gracious, forgiving, and loving outpouring of God's existence toward me, an unworthy sinner.

    I trust in the steadfast love of the one God, the essence of overflowing, self-giving, covenant love. The Creator is everywhere God chooses to be, sustaining each moment from an eternal vantage of love and justice.

    I align with one Lord, Jesus Christ, the source of wisdom and the light of the world, who begins the renewal of Creation by revealing God's justice from trust. He is alive now and in union with us, reconciling us from alienation to the image of God in others. Christ brings healing knowledge of God's justice through his ministry and prayers for me in my human weakness. His body tortured and broken by the Cross transforms it from a technology of human will toward destruction and evasion of responsibility into a symbol of affirmation of life by his supplicating and effective merit. The Cross of Jesus reveals the essence of God. It seals me in God’s love and the trustworthiness of life, and allows us to take firm hope in the victory of  mercy .

    I rely on the Holy Spirit who acts in history to deconstruct hegemony. I read the Reformed Confessions in community and their ethically progressive arc for developing fresh perspectives from scripture that rise to challenges and opportunities of contemporary ministries of reconciliation. In the struggles of saintliness I strive toward deontological virtue, works of love and justice for reconciliation of broken communities through obedience to my Spirit-guided conscience. Through the sacrament of Eucharist I celebrate and renew this union within Christ's trusting community for service to wholeness in others.  I join in the faith of my denomination that my children’s baptisms are justified in the Commandments as we learn the ways of neighborhood peace that deflects human wrath.

    I believe in the universal people of God called forth by Spirit to create peaceful and just communities. We are to equip each other to carry forth not only the announcement but also authentic acts of reconciliation and embodiment of Christ’s justice and material response to a neighbor in need. The Church witnesses to Christ-led consciences and healing power through word, prayer, and deed, in thankfulness for all that we have received and resolving to be grateful for all that we will receive.

    God reveals meaning to a community of spiritual yearning through God's Word.  God freely meets whom God chooses in compassion but will not negate the Creation intended toward freedom.  I exist in Christ for salvation, service, acceptance of cause and effect in the Golden Rule of God, and to join the tradition that makes meaning of the reports of the Cross, the received teachings of Jesus, and post-death encounter with a man Jesus. Salvation comes from forgiveness of sins that allows us to become our true selves: to know God’s will toward humanity that opens our hearts toward love of neighbor and the continued glorification of God.

• How do we look at our fellow human: full of original sin, or made in the image of God?

• How do we understand nature: irrevocably fallen from pristine grace, or restorable by the efforts of the godly?

• How do we align with the unfolding features of the Kingdom of God: by hastening God's intervening arrival through continued degradation and impoverishment, or by working humanely toward its realization by our own, grace-guided actions?

• How do we present the Gospel: by the number who have avoided damnation by simple acceptance of the Lord alone, or by accepting that our Lord tasks believers to work for the realization of and alignment with God's purposes on Earth, which includes grace in all things?

• How may we anticipate heaven: as when real life begins and this earthly existence is only an intermediate testing grounds to be endured, or that earthly life is the real life and that our heavenly destiny reveals what we do in this life?

• How may we discern and practice eschatological ethics: that the Sermon on the Mount is negated by the Book of Revelation's sword-bearing Lamb, or that the Sermon on the Mount is addressed to all believers for all ages?

      
I stand for the second awareness in each.