for Further Reflection and Discussion
- Have you ever had a question in your own life un-answered by God?
- Can you think of a time you hit a bar-rier that was offensive to you as a Chris-tian that you might not have noticed otherwise?
- How should a community respond when faithful members have different ideas of what God is calling the community to do?
- Has God done big things in your life that led you to redraw boundaries?
- The article suggests that two roles of the Divine are to un-answer questions and invite us to follow. Do you agree? What other roles has the Divine played in your life, your family, or your faith community?
- Is it enough to say, “God doesn’t change, but our understanding does,” or do you have different thoughts about that?
- Can you think of a time when your Christian identity conflicted with another of your identities?
- Has God invited you to follow in different ways? What are some ways God invites us?
—Andrew Shields, World Church Secretary
God Un-Answers and Invites
by Andrew Shields,
World Church secretary
Being a divinely led prophetic people involves—as a necessity—reevaluat-ing at times some existing under-standings and customs to allow added insight and interpretation under the Spirit’s guidance.—Doctrine and Covenants 164, first introductory statement
God does big things in the world.
God created everything. God formed a covenant people from those in Egypt’s underclass willing to let a story shape them. God transformed everything by joining the world, fully human and fully Divine, in Jesus Christ. God formed our faith community by powerfully impressing a call into the heart of a young man searching for answers and into the hearts of those who followed him.
God does big things in the world—but not predictably. God touches the untouchable, breathes divinity into the world in a dank stable, and chooses surprising (and surprised) people to be servants.
A prophetic people must listen carefully for God’s movement in our world. We must be attentive to scripture and tradition. We must be alert for God to do the unexpected in unpredictable places.
Our Primary Identity
Prophet-president Stephen M. Veazey reflects on a passage from Galatians in his introduction to Section 164. Galatians is a letter from Paul to a church community he founded, where he shared his best insights and celebrated as they connected to the Holy Spirit in personal, relational ways.
Both Paul and our most-recent revelations point to our identity as formed by the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, first and foremost. Everything else that identifies us answers to that primary identity.
What if this is true? What if ev-erything else is less important than that central truth? In our language, today, that means we accept being a prophetic people. We accept account-ability to the Holy Spirit that shapes us. We agree to live our lives based on the divine will instead of our own.
If our primary identity is Christian, then the barriers that offend Jesus Christ matter more to us than any barriers that affect us in our other identities.
We have fresh attention and ur-gency as we read this in the prologue to Section 164:
The Spirit helped me see much broader dimensions of God's grace working through Christ to transform human relationships in a divided world.
Broader Dimensions and Boundaries
I think it would be perplexing to be a devout Jew confronted with the ideas in early Christianity. How could a faithful God expand the covenant with Israel to include everyone? Gentiles could not possibly be worth the sacrifice of a unique relationship with Israel. Scripture is clear that God has a special relationship with Israel, but Christians claim that when the Divine came to Earth in Jesus Christ, that relationship expanded.
From a current Christian perspective, what God did through Jesus Christ changed the world. So, sure, we can redraw boundaries after earthquakes that alter the landscape—something big happened.
Now the church is trying to redraw boundaries in our time. How can that be of God?
Early Restoration views were clear. All other churches were human insti-tutions, but in this church, you can see miracles, have a personal relationship with the Divine, and reshape the last days of this world to more closely resemble God’s world to come. The Holy Spirit moved in this church, but not through any others.
How can we get to a point where we believe that baptisms by priesthood besides our own may be able to create a real covenant between a believer and Jesus Christ? What does it cost us to admit that it is possible the Holy Spirit is active beyond the confines of our member rolls?
Do we still have a unique call to reflect the nature of Jesus Christ and promote right relationships?Is God doing something big now?
The “Eternity and Change” Difficulty
If God is eternal and does not change, then how can our theology change? How can our course shift if we fix our eyes on the unmoving, unbending light of God’s eternal truth? If we have scripture that plainly answers a question, how dare we ask it again? How can the answer come back different? How could our tradition have been right then, and right now, if the answers contradict each other?
These questions do not have easy answers, and I have wrestled with them. Questions like this are, in fact, why it is important for us to consider theology. The way we understand God to be, and what we think God wants, directly affects how we live. Are we faithful? Do we understand the call? These are questions we must wrestle with and bring to God. I do not claim to have all truth on this, but I hope some of my struggles can help you.
God Un-Answers Questions
One of the most-important roles of the divine presence of God is to un-answer questions.
Would Abraham have children with Sarah? Age answered that question. God un-answered it. Roman power answered the question of whether anything could rival its might, when soldiers crucified Jesus Christ. God un-answered it.
Moses replied to the burning bush that he was unfit to serve, answering the question. Jonah decisively an-swered the question of whether or not he would go to Nineveh in response to God’s call. The law clearly answered the question of how a community should deal with a woman caught in adultery.
Israel understood that God would send a messiah to set them free from their Roman oppressors through military action. The disciples understood that children would annoy Jesus and should be kept in their place.
The Pharisee hosting dinner understood that if Jesus was truly holy, he would not let the unclean woman touch him.
In Galatians, Paul suggests that Jesus came not to break the law, but to fulfill it, to point people toward a new understanding: The heart of the law is relationship and love. In Acts, Peter faces a new understanding of the mis-sion to the Gentiles that shatters his lifelong conviction of what the law demands.
Human understanding of answers does not even slow God down.
We rely on scripture to keep us anchored in the story of God’s relationship with humanity. This story is full of twists, turns, and divine surprise. Is that no longer true? Do we have all the answers now?
Are we willing to accept that it is possible that the Holy Spirit breathes into our community and has a new understanding that we cannot reconcile with our previous understanding? If we cannot make it work in our own minds and hearts, can we then say to God, “You have nothing further to say on this matter”?
Is our Restoration faith community still listening, even if God un-answers questions that we consider foundational? Can we listen for a new answer that may change us?
God Invites Us to Follow
Another of the most-important roles of the divine presence of God is to invite us to follow.
The human impulse presses us to find solutions, settle questions, and move on. The human impulse presses us to respond to ambiguity with clarifying rules. The human impulse presses us to avoid situations where we cannot present a thorough rationale that explains the details of the decision-making process that brought us to our current position. The human impulse presses us to protect ourselves with boundaries.
These impulses are not bad. But because we’re a people formed by the Holy Spirit, these impulses should not shape our primary identity.
Relationship with the divine presence of God presses us to endure the human impulse and live deeper, vulnerable to God and to each other, without all the answers.
When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he was not laying out a systematic theology that would anticipate and answer every question about how the ideas fit together. Paul wrote a letter to a community he cared about. He addressed their problems in their time and clarified how his understanding of their call fit with what they were doing.
The need to answer all questions did not drive Paul’s writing. Paul needed to inspire a community to live up to God’s vision and call for it. Paul differstruggled to voice God’s invitation to follow Jesus Christ’s example and live a new way, creating a new world.
God Calls Us
“Community of Christ,” your name, given as a divine blessing, is your identity and calling. If you will discern and embrace its full meaning, you will not only discover your future, you will become a blessing to the whole creation. Do not be afraid to go where it beckons you to go. —Doctrine and Covenants 163:1
Community of Christ has a unique place in this world. God has a unique calling for this people. We have tremendous experience and insight to offer the world—not by becoming the same as everyone else, but by trusting the Holy Spirit that can unite without erasing difference.
We are expanding our understanding of God’s covenant with the world. As a community, we are working through our understanding of what God’s call to us in this time means. How will we answer? What is a faithful response to God’s coaxing to claim more of our vision, to become who God calls us to be? We continue to engage that question as a prophetic people.