Hi, Ake -

Christianity is founded on a rich and wonderful tradition, amplified by the wisdom of many generations of believers and thinkers. If you look around you can find believers for whom the faith really makes a difference - you can see their wisdom and serenity - and humility. Too often, we look to the leaders of religious groups and define faith by the practices of the Ruling Class of Religion - but faith is often far away from the Ruling Class. The title of this thread is misleading, because it implies that there are flaws in Christian theology. Theology is an exploration, and it goes up many dead-end paths - but that is the process of theology, exploration, not answers. The flaw occur when the Ruling Class decides to take a theological exploration and codify it as Truth, defining it isn terms that are most often oversimplified and open to misunderstanding. Any time you try to put matters of faith into words, it gets really complicated - and then people try to simplify all that stuff and miss all the nuances.

Most people, including most people who call themselves religious, haven't gotten to that point yet. Some are honestly seeking, but many have found or constructed a plateau they find comfortable, and they stop looking. Oftentimes, instead of finding God, they tie themselves to a hodgepodge of half-understood religious verbiage and empty slogans. Then they use all their energy to try to prove themselves right and others wrong.

Faith is a relationship with God, not a pledge to buy into a bunch of words. Faith is profoundly simple the interaction between the human and the divine. It certainly is supernatural, and it is beyond the power of words to adequately describe it. We don't acquire faith by listening to words - we get it by seeing people of faith, and how their faith made sense to them. For me, it was my grandmother - the kindest person I have even known. God was part of every moment of her life, but she didn't make a big deal of it. It just made sense to her. She gave me a start, but many others have carried me along the way.

The beauty of the Scriptures is that they show how a people lived a life of faith. You see it in individuals in Scripture, and you see it in the community of those who called themselves the People of God. One most important thing to see is that their path was crooked - even for Jesus. There were no slogans and doctrines and easy answers. They lived life as a journey, as we all do - but people of faith make that journey is a (sometimes uneasy) relationship with God.

The doctrines and moral codes and traditions are all necessary to help us understand and explore that journey - but we have to remember that the faith lies in the relationship with God and all of God's creation. All that other stuff is only words. Useful words - but still only words. I have to say that in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and in many other sacred writings, the words have taken on a life of their own because they have been pondered for generations - so yeah, those words are more than mere words. For me, the words of Peter in Acts, the four Gospels, and the struggling and conflicting thinking of Paul have special meaning.

So, yeah, if you want faith, watch for people of faith. You'll find people of faith in all creeds - pagan, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, atheist. You'll find they're all on a journey of exploration, and they won't have ready answers for you. But if you watch how they make their journey, you'll start to understand.

-Joe Offer-