Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today

by John Shelby Spong

Was Peter the first to see this? Was he the one who saw in Jesus a life driven not by survival, but by the love that enabled him to give his life away? Did this vision enable him to see God in a new way, not as the almighty one, the heavenly father or the judge of the world, but as the Source of Life, expanding the early Christians’ understanding of what it means to live; as the Source of Love, freeing them to love beyond their boundaries and their fears without the expectation of gaining love in return; and as the Ground of Being, giving them the courage to be all that they could be and, in the process, freeing others to be all that they could be? Was this the vision of God that they saw in Jesus, who called people beyond the barriers of tribe, race, ethnicity and gender? When he was victimized by those to whom he only offered love, when he died forgiving, loving, freeing, is that when they saw that God was in him? Was resurrection the ability to see that Jesus had taken his humanity to a new dimension and had now stepped into the being of that which they called divine? Was it a step from self-consciousness into a universal consciousness, into an awareness of the oneness of all things?